


Face hell and walk backwards into the light

by ravenbringslight



Series: Author's favorites [5]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Afterlife, All Magic Comes With a Price, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canonical Character Death, Dirty Talk, Dreamsharing, Fix-It of Sorts, Ghost Sex, Grief/Mourning, Healing, King Thor (Marvel), Loki (Marvel) Has Issues, M/M, Masturbation, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Resurrection, Romance, Sex, Sibling Incest, Slow Burn, Spirit World, Suicidal Thoughts, Switching, Trials, Yggdrasil - Freeform, of the mystical sort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-09
Updated: 2018-07-04
Packaged: 2019-05-04 09:18:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 15
Words: 37,870
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14589837
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ravenbringslight/pseuds/ravenbringslight
Summary: Thanos is defeated, but the cost for Thor seems too high to bear. Left without a home, a family, or most of his friends, how can he lead his people when he can barely lead himself? And every time he closes his eyes he sees his brother's dead face.Until the time that he closes his eyes and he sees hisactual brother.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I promise I'm still working on With Threshing Oar, but then I saw Infinity War and I had to write this too.

Thor is no stranger to the aftermath of battle.

There is the initial exhilaration that gives way to the sinking letdown, then the bone deep weariness. After, the time for rest and healing, for tending to wounds both physical and emotional; each leave their own particular scars. Mourning the dead is sometimes easier when the reward of Valhalla is assured, but it is never happy. This in-between time, after the fight is over but before life starts up again, is when the final accounting takes place—was it worth it? When all is said and done, do the scales tip in your favor? Can you gather up your broken pieces and put them back together?

Thor has fought many battles and recovered from each one, made himself anew each time, but this time feels different.

This time, though Thor and his companions have managed to kill the Titan, break the soul gem, and restore all those who had crumbled to dust, Thor fears that he is finally irrevocably broken.

There is no home waiting for him, no family, no friends. Nothing but a handful of his people, traumatized refugees all of them—himself included in that number—only he is supposed to lead them all, somehow.

“Where are you going?” Rocket asks him, trailing in his wake as Thor strides away from the battlefield. Thor’s companions are tearfully embracing their restored loved ones, and though Thor is happy for them in a detached sort of way, he can’t bear to look on their joy. His own loss is still wrapped around his heart with barbed red-hot iron.

“Go back to Tree,” Thor says gently. “I’ll be fine.”

“You don’t look fine,” Rocket pries again. “Look, I’m not good at this, you know, feelings stuff, but. You look like you could use a friend right now.”

Thor smiles without warmth, for he can find no real happiness in him to bring forth; Rocket has been a good companion these last hellish weeks though, as good as any he’s had, and he deserves a smile at least. “Thank you, Rabbit. I’m going...home.”

“And where might that be?”

“You know what? I have no idea.”

Thor turns and thrusts Stormbreaker into the air and lets the Bifrost carry him away.

*

Thor lands hard, nearly stumbling in his exhaustion. He’s in a metal corridor, the faint hum of the spacecraft’s engines just barely detectable.

“THOR!” Valkyrie cries out. She’s at his side in an instant, holding him up, and he clutches at her gratefully. She steers him into the nearest room and bashes the door button with her elbow to give them some privacy. Thor can feel himself start to fall to pieces, can feel his face crumpling, and with a huge force of will he keeps the tears locked in his eyes.

“Gods, I’m so glad you’re here,” he gasps, and crushes her in a bear hug. “How many did you manage to save?”

Valkyrie’s eyes are sad, and with a sharp pang Thor remembers that she is no stranger to this kind of loss.

“Five hundred,” she says quietly. 

Thor hears a choked sound escape his own throat and he wipes at his face with the back of his hand. The number is so absurdly small that it beggars belief. 

Valkyrie’s voice is steely. “Did you kill him?”

“Yes.”

“I know he’s dead, but did _you_ kill him?”

Thor looks back at her and his jaw tightens.

“ _Yes_.”

“ _Good_ ,” Valkyrie spits. Their eyes lock. In that moment they are two kindred spirits united by bloodlust and vengeance and Thor has never felt more understood. Then, “You got a new eye.”

“Yeah. I’ll tell you about it later. Where are we?”

“Near Vanaheim. I’ll tell _you_ about it later. You need to sleep for a week by the looks of it.”

Thor passes a hand over his face again. “I do,” he agrees. “You can tell the people I’m back if you think it’ll help, but don’t let anyone in to see me until I say so. Is there space for me to sleep?”

“You can take my room til I can kick someone else out of theirs.”

“Thank you,” Thor says devoutly.

*

Thor does sleep for a week, or nine days actually, and he when he finally rises from the bed he feels no more rested than the moment he crawled into it.

“So why Vanaheim?” Thor asks Valkyrie over a depressingly small breakfast.

“I didn’t know where else to take everyone,” she says, pursing her lips slightly. “Earth seemed a real shitshow at the time, and your mom was from Vanaheim, wasn’t she? I thought they might not kick us out right away at least.”

“Mm,” Thor says. “Let’s hope you’re right. How far out are we?”

“Three days now, and it can’t come sooner. We’re running out of food.”

“I’ll go on ahead,” Thor says. “Try to negotiate. See if I can bring some supplies back with me at least.”

“With that thing?” Valkyrie says, nodding towards Stormbreaker.

“Yep. Got a brand new Bifrost.”

“Convenient.”

“I thought so too. Though it didn’t feel very convenient when I had to stand in the middle of Eitri’s forge on full blast to make the damned thing work.”

“Fucking _ouch_ ,” Val says, looking at him with something approaching respect. “That must’ve stung.”

“A bit.”

Thor chews in silence for a moment while Valkyrie stares into space.

“I’m so fucking sick of spaceships,” she finally says. “Find us a new home, yeah?”

Thor barks out a laugh. “I don’t even know what that is anymore.”

*

Thor travels to Vanaheim alone. It was his mother’s homeland, and Hogun’s too, and he’s been there many, many times. Never as a King, though, and never when he was begging for aid.

Freyr and Freyja receive him in an open-air throne room made of sleek marble. Ivy twines around the snow-white pillars and up the sides of their intricately carved thrones. They rule Vanaheim as Brother and Sister Consort, and for some reason he can’t quite explain it makes Thor’s chest ache.

Thor speaks the prettiest words he knows. Freyr and Freyja listen graciously enough, but Thor can imagine with crystal clarity Loki laughing at his attempt at diplomacy and stepping in with his own silvered tongue instead, saving Thor from his bumbling and securing them anything they might wish. In Thor’s wildest dreams he had never imagined that he would be in this kind of position _without_ Loki. It makes his voice choke with grief while he begs for supplication, and perhaps it is this raw emotion that finally softens Freyr and Freyja to his pleas.

“Your people may stay here,” Freyja says finally. “Though on a provisional basis. Let it never be said that Vanaheim does not offer shelter to those in need. However—”

“—we reserve the right to request you to leave should you become troublesome,” Freyr continues. “But we hope that doesn’t happen.”

“For the love we bore your mother,” Freyja adds, not unkindly.

“Thank you,” Thor says gratefully. “She spoke often and highly of you as well.”

Freyr waves one ring-bedecked hand. “Your people will be here in three days, you said?”

“Yes.”

“We had best start preparing, then.”

*

They end up drafting what is essentially a treaty, and working out the details takes the rest of the three days. Thor falls into a dreamless sleep each night. Part of it is exhaustion, but most of it is the copious amount of wine that he finds in his chambers each evening when he retires. Without it, the only thing he can see when he closes his eyes is his brother’s pale lifeless face, so he drinks until he passes out instead.

He’s mourned Loki so many times already. He doesn’t know why it should keep hurting just as much.

The escape pod bearing the last remnants of the once-mighty Asgardian people touches down in a meadow full of wildflowers and ringed by dark pine forest. There is a contingent of Vanir waiting for them. Thor’s people file out, squinting in the bright light. Some fall to their knees in the grass. Some just stare about helplessly. Some cry. A few of the Sakaarian gladiators are left as well, though not Korg or Miek—another loss, the pain so dull it barely even registers anymore.

“How am I supposed to be their King?” Thor says bitterly to Valkyrie. They’re standing together with the Vanir, arms crossed. “When it is my own actions that have brought them to this?”

“You had no choice,” Valkyrie says. “I know. I was there. Don’t beat yourself up. You’re a good man.”

“That hasn’t seemed to do me much good. Or them.”

The Vanir have begun construction of what amounts to a village for the Asgardians to occupy. There are only five hundred of them—five hundred and seven to be precise—so they don’t require that much land. The area chosen for them butts up against this very meadow, snug up between the forest and the foothills, with a middling sized river and room to grow crops. It’s more than they could have hoped for, and far, far less than what they’re used to.

Thor sleeps with his people tonight instead of in his royal guest chambers. Most of them are camped out in the meadow, loathe to step foot back inside that floating death box. There is no roof over Thor’s head but the night sky and no wine to dull his senses and his mind ranges far. He finally lets his grief wash over him. It batters him like a storm-tossed ship until he can barely breathe and his hair is wet with the tears running unchecked down his face.

At least when Thanos was still alive, Thor had something to _fight_. Now that he doesn’t, he feels helpless, and hopeless, and impotent, and he’s never felt like this before and _he doesn’t know what to do_.

Thor doesn’t realize when he falls asleep, but he must be dreaming because he is back in the palace on Asgard and his hand is pushing open the door to his apartment. It’s just as he remembers it. The walls of the sitting room are draped with tapestries; the threadbare couch that he wouldn’t let the servants throw away; the remains of last night’s drinking strewn messily over the table, his muddy boots on the rug (oh, Loki would be so irritated), his armor tossed haphazardly in the corner. Someone has built the fire while he was out and the cheerful orange flicker casts everything in homey familiarity. There are two tall-backed chairs in front of the hearth as there always are; one is empty but Thor can see one booted foot sticking out the side of the other one.

“I was wondering when you’d finally get here,” a familiar voice says, deep and silver-bright at the same time, and Thor scrambles in his haste to make it around the chair and come face-to-face with its occupant.

Loki is marking his place in a book and closing it gently, and he looks up at Thor with a knowing smile.

“Brother,” Loki says.

Thor lets out a great sob and falls to his knees. He reaches for Loki’s leg, but his hand passes through it.

“I’m sorry,” Loki says apologetically. “I seem to be rather dead, don’t I?”

Thor sobs again and buries his face in his hands. This is too much. This is...this isn’t a dream. It was stupid of him not to have realized it earlier. He has visited this place before. _”Are you the God of Hammers?”_ he can hear his father’s voice echoing from this same liminal space.

“Is this Valhalla?” Thor chokes out.

Loki has gotten up to come kneel in front of him. They can’t touch, but Loki holds his hands up with his palms facing outward and, shakily, Thor does the same until they’re a hair's breadth away from each other.

“I don’t know,” Loki says. Were his eyes always so green? “It’s...an odd thing.”

“Loki,” Thor says despairingly, as though his brother’s name contains all meanings he can possibly convey.

“I know,” Loki whispers.

“Why did you do it?” Thor says. “Attack Thanos like that?”

“I thought that maybe I could save you. It looks like it worked, yes?”

“I wish we had both died.”

Loki makes a wordless noise. “And then half the universe would still be trapped inside that wretched stone.”

“ _Loki_ ,” Thor says again. “You really died this time.”

“Even a snake like me runs out of lives eventually.”

Instinctually, Thor brings his hand up to clasp Loki’s neck, and again his hand passes through his brother completely. He hits his own leg in frustration.

“I killed him,” Thor says vehemently. “I took his miserable head from his miserable body and—”

“Shh, I know. I know. I was there.”

“What do you mean?” Thor says, confused, but suddenly the room is fading and Loki is fading with it, and with a cry of dismay Thor grabs for his brother even though he knows he can’t touch him.

“Next time,” the ghost of Loki’s voice murmurs in his ear. “I’ll be here.” His voice fades to nothing by the last word and Thor wakes up with a start.

The birds are singing and he’s covered in dew and all he wants with every fiber of his being is to fall back asleep and see Loki again.

But he’s the King and people are counting on him, so he heaves himself to his feet and goes to find Valkyrie instead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some absolutely [lovely artwork](https://lokijunkie.tumblr.com/post/178379619620/a-little-doodle-for-face-hell-and-walk-backwards) by my friend Andromeda for Thor's dream. <3 Thank you so much!


	2. Chapter 2

Now that Thor has the power of the Bifrost at his disposal again, he gathers the remaining Sakaarian ex-slaves.

“Anyone who wishes to remain here is welcome as a citizen of Asgard,” he tells them, “and we would be glad to have you. But anyone who has a home they wish to return to, I’ll deliver you there myself and with all my thanks for the help you’ve offered us. And you are all invited to return to Asgard any time you want, for we do not forget our debts lightly.”

A handful or so of the ex-slaves decide to leave, and twice as many stay.

Thor ferries them to all corners of the universe. Sakaar really had been a dumping ground for lost people and objects everywhere.

Some return to families who cry tears of joy, and Thor quietly removes himself back to Vanaheim; these should be private moments and they make his own pain feel all the sharper. Some return not to family, but simply for the chance to rebuild themselves in a place they call home. One returns to find her family dead, slaughtered by Thanos before The Snap, and she turns to Thor with hard eyes. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I can’t stay here. Bring me back with you.”

“Of course,” Thor agrees. Her name is Veria. She is yellow-skinned and purple-eyed, as broad and tall as Thor himself and with a tiny pair of curling horns, and back on Vanaheim—Asgard?—she becomes his unofficial bodyguard, a mostly silent shadow whose stony gaze and prominent axe do most of the talking.

“I feel wrong calling this Asgard, but we are not Vanir,” Thor admits to Valkyrie one night over a bottle of Vanaheim blue. They haven’t really known each other all that long, but bonds formed in battle are strong. They have their own campfire, separate from the rest of the encampment though still accessible. “We are Asgardian.”

“A new name, then,” Valkyrie says. She’s had two bottles already herself and doesn’t appear to be slowing down. The Vanir had provided them with enough food and drink and other supplies to last until they have a chance to establish themselves and Val seems determined to work her way through the alcohol supply personally. “Assberg.” She titters.

“Stop.”

“Assplace.”

“Didn’t I tell you that you drink too much and it will probably kill you?”

“Something has to. Assville.” Thor rolls his eyes. “What?” she says. “You have to laugh so you don’t cry. Believe me, I know.”

Thor blows out a hard gusty sigh and chugs half of his own bottle. He’s had this blue wine before but never in such quantity. It goes to his head oddly.

“Asgardia,” he says.

“Fine, be serious.”

“I will. Asgardia.”

They’re both quiet for a moment, then Val raises her bottle in a toast. “To Asgardia.”

*

Though he offers up a silent plea to the universe every time he closes his eyes, Thor doesn’t see Loki again until the first night he sleeps in his own new bed in his own newly constructed longhouse.

“Brother,” Thor says, sagging in relief. This time they’re in Loki’s old apartment instead of his. Loki’s workbench takes up a whole wall, full of potions and odd contraptions and stacks of books, its surface scorched and stained from years of hard use. His private book collection takes up another entire wall, and over in the corner is the divan he placed there centuries ago to flop down for a quick nap when his work kept him from appropriate sleeping habits. Thor had often caught Loki sleeping there, drooling onto his own arm while one of his experiments boiled over. Loki’s workroom always smelled like a combination of burning, ink, and an acrid slightly sweet odor that Thor could never name, and the smell of it now nearly takes his breath away.

Loki is standing at the workbench with his back to Thor, studying an alembic dripping a hissing blue liquid into a beaker.

“I didn’t remember this room being quite so small,” Loki says conversationally. “Hello, brother.”

Thor aches to clasp Loki’s neck and pull him into a hug, but he thinks that if he tries to touch Loki again and can’t that he might break, so instead he flexes his hands at his sides.

“I miss you,” Thor says. He’s always been blunt, but this is a bit much even for him. He can’t help it though. “Are you well? Here?”

“Well?” Loki laughs and turns to face Thor. “I’m dead. I suppose I’m as well as I can be considering the situation. I like the new name you picked out, by the way.”

“You seem happy,” Thor says desperately, because he wants this at least to be true. If his brother has to be dead, maybe at least he has found himself some measure of peace. “Have you seen mother? Father?”

“I’m not...unhappy,” Loki allows. “And no, not exactly.”

Thor feels his throat threaten to close. He had hoped beyond hope that Loki had found his way back to Frigga. That maybe...maybe Thor himself might be able to see her…

“There’s so much I want to tell you,” Thor says miserably.

“I think I probably know a lot of it,” Loki says, his voice gentle, and he paces over to stand inches away from Thor, his arms locked behind his back and his gaze piercing. “I’m never far from you.”

Thor sucks in his breath. Loki had said something similar the first time. “What—how—why—”

“I don’t know how much time we have,” Loki says, turning and beginning to pace, worrying at one hand with the other. It’s an old nervous habit that he shares with their mother. “I remember giving Thanos the Tesseract, I remember throwing you out of the way of the Hulk, I remember drawing my knife—” He pauses and stares at the floor for a second. “And then I remember getting to my feet to try and free you from that metal cage, but instead I saw you crying over a dead body. My dead body. It was...disconcerting to say the least.”

“Oh,” Thor says faintly.

“I don’t remember dying, if it’s any consolation.”

“It is, actually.”

They look at each other for a long moment, both of their faces full of hopeless yearning, and Loki reaches one hand towards Thor. “I’m sorry,” Loki says. “That you had to watch. Again.”

Thor’s mouth flickers in a not-smile. “We do seem pretty good at that, don’t we?”

Loki smiles too. “Well, I doubt anyone has more practice at it than we do.” He closes his eyes and shivers. “I think you’re about to wake up. Thor—Sif—when I was Odin, I sent her to Alfheim, she’s probably still there—”

“Where?” Thor says, sudden hope blooming in his chest, but he is already swimming out of sleep, nothing left of Loki but the afterimage of his sad eyes burned into Thor’s retinas.

*

“We’re going to Alfheim,” Thor announces to Valkyrie during their morning briefing.

“Why?” Val is having bacon and whiskey for breakfast, more whiskey than bacon really, and she eyes him dubiously.

“One of our people is there.”

“And you know this how?”

“I know.”

Val takes a swig of her drink and points at him. “You should send someone else. Delegate. Don’t you know what it means to be King?”

“No, not really.”

She huffs a laugh. “Fair enough, I guess. When do we go?”

*

It takes them a few days to locate Sif, but in reality it’s not hard to track down a very angry and fighty lone Asgardian warrior, even in a realm as vast as Alfheim. “Odin” had sent her to a particularly remote part of Alfheim under the pretense of helping to protect the locals, but Thor hazards a guess that Sif was just cottoning onto Loki more than his brother liked and so he’d gotten rid of her.

“Thor!” Sif cries when she sees him, and for the first time in a long time Thor feels a real grin split his face. Sif draws up short, her brows knotted in confusion. “Your hair! Your eyes! Where is your hammer!”

Thor’s grin fades as quickly as it was born. “I have much to tell you,” he says wearily. “And the hideousness of my personal appearance is the least of it.”

“Hideous,” Valkyrie snorts, and Sif turns to her.

“I don’t believe we’ve met,” Sif says.

“Brunnhilde,” Val says. “Though no one calls me that.”

“We call her Valkyrie,” Thor says. “Because she is one.”

Sif looks excitedly back and forth between them. “A _Valkyrie_?” she says, in some disbelief. “I thought you were all dead!”

Val tightens her mouth. “Yeah, we kind of are.”

“I am sorry,” Sif says seriously, placing her fist over her heart. “I meant no offense. Where are our brave friends?” she says, turning back towards Thor.

He feels his gut tighten. “Like I said, I have much to tell you,” he says seriously. Sif’s face falls. Thor wishes he could offer her comfort, but he doesn’t really have any to spare. “Will you come back with us?”

“I would like nothing better.”

*

Sif joins his unofficial entourage—King Thor Odinson of Asgardia, God of Thunder and Lord of The Storm (recently homeless)—accompanied by his off-worlder bodyguard, his oldest friend, and a hero from legend. They make a formidable group.

Recounting to Sif everything that happened since her de facto banishment rips all of Thor’s wounds open anew, though they had not healed much to begin with, and by the end of it neither of them is dry-eyed. Thor has never seen Sif cry before, not once, and it’s the first tear that spills down her cheek that paves the way for his own. Thor thinks he may have cried more in the past month than he has in the past two centuries, and he still feels like his well of tears is nowhere close to empty.

“We should hold a sumbel,” Sif says, scrubbing at her face, “for everyone.”

The idea had occurred to Thor in a vague sort of way but he has honestly been in no frame of mind to toast any gods or think too long upon his lost loved ones, and he fears that all poetry may have permanently fled his soul, so he’s been putting it off.

Sif is right though.

His people need it. Thor is not the only one who has experienced loss.

“I should have done it sooner,” Thor says. “Thank you for prodding me. Can you organize the food and drink with Val? Or get someone else to do it. I don’t care. I just want it done and I don’t have time to do it myself.”

Sif is already composed again. She hadn’t become one of the most feared warriors in Asgard by being unable to control her emotions. “Consider it done.”

*

Their number is small but still too large to fit around one bonfire, so they build three in the meadow next to Asgardia and light them at sundown.

Thor steps back and lets his people do most of the talking. The drinks flow freely and they toast the gods and the fates, and then their own fallen dead. Everyone who wants to recounts tales of their family and friends, boasting over their triumphs, reminiscing over their antics, waxing nostalgic and sorrowful and joyful all at once. No one is rushed to stop talking, and everyone listens intently. This is as much sacred as it is needed.

“And what of you, My King!” cries a red-cheeked youth, made bold by alcohol and camaraderie. He looks young enough that he probably just missed the cutoff to be Einherjar; it’s probably the only thing that spared his life. “Tell us of your dead!”

Thor pulls his affable public mask on as best he can, though it has more cracks now than it ever did, and comes forward.

“You all know of the Allfather’s deeds,” he says, as warmly as he can. “And the Allmother as well. She died a true warrior’s death and may none ever forget it.” A murmur of agreement runs through the crowd. “But let me tell you of three of the best men I’ve ever had occasion to know. You may recall them as The Warriors Three—”

It feels good, actually, to talk about his friends again. He tells some of the best stories he can remember about each of them—the time Fandral fought off twenty enemies and then in a state of wild exhilaration bedded an entire brothel, men and women both—the time Volstagg won an enormous treasure trove by out-eating a dragon—the time Hogun won a battle of riddles against a Sphinx (it hadn’t surprised Hogun, though it surprised everyone else). Sif adds some of her own remembrances and they end up passing a horn back and forth to each other until they run out of stories to tell.

And then, because his tongue is loose and his heart is warm, Thor begins to speak of Loki.

He knows that his brother was not dearly beloved of the people, but he was—is—dearly beloved of Thor and Thor will not leave him forgotten or unmourned.

“I know that you’ve heard about many of Loki’s exploits,” Thor says, smiling. “From me the other times I thought him dead, and from him, at length, on stage, twice a day for several years.” A bit of weak laughter from the crowd.

Thor looks into the fire until the dancing flames consume his vision. He almost feels like he can see Loki from the corner of his eye, that if he just turned his head fast enough he could catch his brother standing right there.

“He died a hero,” Thor says firmly, looking up. “He died trying to save my life.” Thor knows his words are woefully inadequate, but he needs to try. “He was my brother, but he was more than that. He was my best friend, my good right hand—my good right eye—” More nervous laughter. No one knows if they’re quite allowed to laugh at the King, even when he’s making the jokes himself. Thor almost feels bad about it, but he lets himself have this; Loki would have thrived on making people nervous. The God of Mischief would have accepted nothing less.

“I’m proud to call him brother, and I miss him every second that he is not walking among us.” There’s a flicker like a shadow at the edge of Thor’s vision, but he turns his head and sees nothing. It’s probably just an artifact of the bonfire.

“He was the bravest person I’ve ever known. Fierce. Left no status quo unturned. He was the spark that begins the fire, the water droplet that breaks the dam, the snowball that brings the mountain down around everyone’s heads. The disaster you didn’t know you needed until it happened and changed your stagnant life completely.”

Thor can feel his throat tightening now and he cuts himself off, raising his horn high. “To Loki of Asgard, who I love most dearly.” He drinks deeply, then thrusts the horn at Sif and turns from the fire. “I fear I must retire now,” he announces to no one in particular. “Excuse me.”

Thor goes back to his own longhouse, strips, and buries himself in his bed. He needs to dream of Loki again tonight, he needs to see him. It’s an ache so fierce that he’s surprised his body is still whole and not just a broken pile of disarticulated limbs and shattered heart.

“Please,” he whispers as he closes his eyes.

As he drops off to fitful sleep he feels a tingling warmth on his cheek, almost like a kiss, and a soft sigh that might only be the wind in the trees.


	3. Chapter 3

“Look,” Loki says. He’s facing an enormous redwood tree, and he brings his hand up as if he’s tracing something on the bark.

The sight of his brother makes Thor nauseous with relief and despair in equal measure. His strides are long as he nearly bounds across the moonlit mountain glade to join Loki’s side.

“Look,” Loki says again.

There are a thousand things Thor might say, but instead he does as Loki commands. Carved into the bark are the runes _thurisaz_ and _laguz_ —the first symbol of each of their names. It’s Thor’s own handwriting, and Thor knows that if he had Mjolnir, he could fly straight up and out of this forest and be back at the palace in less than an hour.

“Do you remember making these?” Loki asks.

“You wanted to carve them into our arms,” Thor says, the memory clear even though it was centuries ago, “with a knife. Your name on my arm and mine on yours.”

“And you wrestled me into the dirt until I yielded, and we compromised on using the tree as a canvas instead of ourselves.”

Thor looks over at Loki. The night makes his hair look as dark as ink spilled across the white parchment of his face, and Thor thinks he may be able to see the faint glimmer of stars through the outline of his brother’s body. Loki’s lips are quirked in something that may or may not be a smile.

“I still wish we’d carved them on our arms instead,” Loki says.

It suddenly seems intolerable to Thor that his body bears no outward sign of the scars that Loki has left in his heart. “I wish that we had, too.”

When Loki looks at him, Thor can’t tell if his eyes are bright with tears or simply with starlight.

“Why can’t I come here every night?” Thor asks. “And why is our time always so short?” He can feel the moments slipping away as they talk, and each one wounds him on its way past. He doesn’t want to wake. He used to have nightmares of Ragnarok, but it’s his waking life that’s the nightmare now.

“You’re still alive,” Loki says, as if that explains everything.

Suddenly all Thor can think about is that when he wakes up he won’t have any way to see Loki’s face. “I don’t even have anything left with your face on it,” he says.

“Perhaps it’s better that way,” Loki says in a tone of voice that’s obviously meant to be comforting. “You can move on.”

“I can’t,” Thor says grimly. “I won’t.”

He raises his hand, but stops himself before he can try to grip Loki’s neck. He runs his fingers through his own hair instead and clenches his teeth. Loki’s eyes are soft and the downturned corners of his mouth are hard and in that moment Thor wishes more than anything that he could just...smooth it all away...cup Loki’s neck the way his empty hands want to and stroke his cheeks until they’re smiling instead of frowning, both of them smiling, and Norns, it’s been _so long_ since they’ve smiled together and now it will never happen again.

“I hate…” Thor pauses to blow out a shaky breath. “I hate doing this without you. I can’t stand it. It’s wrong. Everything is wrong. I wish you could...I need you to come back. Loki. Please. Come back. This can’t be...you can’t be gone forever...”

The brightness in Loki’s eyes is definitely tears now.

“You’re waking up again,” Loki says sadly.

Desperately, Thor reaches for him, and Loki reaches back, and their hands pass through each other with a warm tingle. Thor wakes with a dull, sick sensation in his stomach and he blinks back furious tears. There must be a better way to see his brother than this haphazard dreaming, maddeningly irregular and always far too short. After everything Thor’s been through, the universe owes him more than _this_.

*

Among the supplies provided by the Vanir is a quantity of flaxseed. They plant it, and Thor walks the fields, coaxing the shoots from the ground. Most know him only as a storm god, but they forget that the storm brings new growth with it. Under Thor’s ministrations, the plants come to full growth within a week, and the people begin harvesting the flax to make into linen thread to be used in weaving. Asgardian weavers are known throughout the Nine Realms for the quality of their work, and once they have a proper supply of materials they’ll be able to start producing goods for trade.

“I need something to hit,” Thor says one morning, restless. He’s not dreamed of Loki again since the night of the sumbel. Growing flax is all well and good, but it does nothing to ease his troubled heart. He feels like a mess of rough edges trying to fit itself into a space that’s just barely too small.

“Gods, me too,” Val says. “Want to go a round or three?”

“Don’t hold back on me,” Thor warns.

Val rolls her eyes. “As if.”

They end up going five rounds, and by the time they’re done Thor feels more like himself than he has in awhile. Asgardians have always enjoyed their sport, and by the time he and Val call it off, sweat-soaked and chests heaving, they’ve attracted a crowd of onlookers.

“My turn next!” Sif calls out. She squares off against Veria. When Sif fights she flows like a dancer, deadly and graceful, and Thor can see that he’s not the only one who appreciates it.

“She was one of our very best warriors,” he murmurs to Val, who hasn’t taken her eyes of Sif since she started sparring.

“She’d have made a good Valkyrie,” Val says.

“Maybe she still could.”

Val gives him a surprised look that quickly gives way to consideration.

“Hmm,” is all she says.

*

Val and Sif start organizing official training for anyone who’s interested. The red-cheeked youth from the bonfire joins eagerly. His name is Erik.

“My family have always been Einherjar,” he says shyly, not as bold in the sober light of day. “My da fought your…” He trails off.

“My sister.”

The boy ducks his head in assent.

“You don’t have to do this if you don’t want to,” Thor says. “We’re hardly standing on tradition anymore.”

“No. I want to.” When Erik looks up his eyes are determined, and Thor claps him on the shoulder.

“Good lad,” Thor says.

That night over dinner, Thor watches Val and Sif sitting close enough that their shoulders touch, murmuring in each other's ears and laughing, and it makes him happy and fiercely lonely at the same time. The space at his own shoulder is empty, and can never be filled by any living person. It is obvious that theirs is no sisterly affection though—hands on thighs, leaning into each other, lips brushing against the shell of an ear. A fleeting thought passes through Thor’s head of the way he and Loki used to share affection markedly similar to this and, disquieted, he gives himself a firm mental shake.

“I'm going out tomorrow,” Thor announces, making the two women turn towards him. “Try not to light everything on fire while I'm gone.”

Sif makes a ‘ha ha very funny’ face at him and he smirks back, though his heart isn't quite in it.

*

The Bifrost takes Thor to Earth. To Stark Tower, specifically.

Thor is swarmed immediately by a group of happy humans. They are so like eager puppies that it makes him smile fondly. Banner gives him a double shoulder grab and a “It’s great to see you again, man”—Captain Rogers clasps his forearm and pulls him into a tight hug (it’s nice to be able to embrace at least one of these humans back with his full strength)—”Doin’ alright, Point Break?” Tony Stark says with a half smile and Thor knocks their foreheads together until the half smile turns into a full one.

“Where are the Guardians?” Thor asks, for he’d like to see Rocket and Tree again if nobody else.

“They took off last week,” Pepper Potts says. She has been hovering inches from Stark the entire time and there is a certain glow to her that Thor finds unmistakable. He’d be a terrible fertility god if he didn’t recognize a pregnant person when he saw one.

“My congratulations, Lady Pepper!” Thor says, and he finds that he really means it. New life in the face of so much death is a joy.

“For what?” Pepper asks, politely puzzled. Thor gestures to her midsection; her cheeks turn pink and her hand flies to her stomach and her mouth forms a silent ‘oh.’

“Wait, what?” Stark says. “What? What did I miss?”

Pepper drags Stark from the room and Rogers and Banner share wide-eyed looks with each other and Thor simply laughs. “Did nobody realize?” he asks. “No matter, it would have become apparent soon enough. But come, friends, I have need of something.”

The item in question is a Starkphone. Thor doesn’t care overly much about its communication abilities, but what he does care about greatly are its recording abilities. Banner brings him to one of the levels of the tower where a servant ( _“Not servants, Thor, employees”_ ) sets Thor up with the newest cutting-edge phone. It’s charmingly quaint, but Thor’s people are in no position to manufacture much of anything right now and he’ll take what he can get.

“Do you even have power cords where you are right now?” Rogers asks.

Thor smirks and holds up two fingers and lets lightning play around his fingertips.

“Ah. Right.”

“Smile,” Thor says, and snaps a picture. One of Rogers and one of Banner and one of all three of them together. There. New memories, to help ease the ache of the old ones. He flicks through them, satisfied, while Rogers and Banner look at each other again.

“You came...all the way here...to take pictures of us?” Banner asks, scrunching his face in that way of his and scratching his neck.

“Yep.”

“That’s—ok. Wow. Yeah. Sure.”

“Where are Stark and Lady Pepper?”

Thor takes pictures of them too (Pepper really is _glowing_ , and the picture of her and Stark together where she’s hiding her face in his shoulder and laughing is Thor’s favorite), then the New York City skyline, and then he bids his friends an utterly confused farewell and takes off in the roar of the Bifrost.

*

Thor lands in Nidavellir.

He and Rocket and Tree had taken off from here so quickly, and he hadn’t wanted to drag poor Eitri into the battle, but he’s been in the back of Thor’s mind ever since. Eitri has nobody left as well, Thanos had seen to that, and the loneliness and pain must be nigh unbearable. Hopefully he’s still here.

“EITRI!” Thor calls out, striding through the forge, his voice echoing. “EITRI, IT’S THOR!”

He finds the dwarf passed out next to a pile of empty bottles, breathing, but just barely.

He’s heavy, but Thor has lifted heavier. He gets a shoulder underneath Eitri and summons the Bifrost once more to carry both of them back to Asgardia. Hopefully Eitri won’t be too mad at him when he wakes up.

*

Over the following days, Thor carries the Starkphone with him everywhere and he takes as many pictures as he can. They’re mostly candid shots of day-to-day life—people farming, training, cooking, building—people laughing and crying—children at play (far too few of them, and it makes his heart hurt)—the land around them. It’s a documentary of their life at this moment in time. He also starts taking portraits, first of those closest to him, then anyone who wishes one.

He would pay anything to be able to have a picture of his brother like this.

Thor had thought briefly of asking Stark for some footage of Loki from the Battle of New York, but he’d decided against it. He didn’t want to remember Loki like that, half mad and monstrously savage and in so much pain that he was barely even recognizable as himself. Better nothing at all than that.

He’s just taken a picture of Val and Sif sparring, fierce grins on their faces and both of their hair whirling about them in great arcs, when a flicker at the edge of his vision distracts him. He blinks and turns his head, briefly convinced he sees someone there, but there’s nothing. These flickers have been happening more and more often lately; Thor wonders if it’s the prosthetic eye going on the fritz. It is nice to have depth perception again, but the flickers are getting extremely irritating. Perhaps he should have Eitri take a look at it.

*

“Is this real or is this in my head?” Thor asks. He’s in that liminal space again, and Loki is here, and this time he’s sitting on a fat tree branch swinging his feet idly. They’re bare and so pale in the moonlight. Thor has the strange compulsion to grab Loki’s foot and kiss his toes.

“Both?” Loki hazards. “I’m not entirely sure. The afterlife isn’t at all what I thought it would be.”

“If I do something here, will it transfer when I wake up?” Thor persists. “Could I take your picture?”

Loki gives him a very familiar look, the ‘I can’t believe my brother is this much of an idiot' look. “I’m guessing not,” he says, his lip curling on the last word. “Come up here and sit with me.”

Thor clambers up and sits next to Loki on the branch. He can almost pretend that this is like any other time they’ve done something like this, any one of a thousand hunting or adventuring trips they’ve taken together. It probably is one of them—every dream location so far has been from their past. Thor’s hand is resting on the branch between them. Deliberately, Loki spreads his hand out to match the shape of Thor’s and then lets his hand come lightly down. He stops just above Thor’s hand, hesitating for a moment, then keeps going until his hand sinks through Thor’s and rests on the branch too, their bodies overlapping in space.

It’s warm, and it tingles, and Thor gets a rush through his entire body.

“Loki,” he says miserably. “What do we do? Seeing you here like this is torture, but if it stopped it would be...so much worse…”

“I see you every day,” Loki says. “Imagine how bad it is for me, to see and be able to do nothing at all.”

Thor flips his hand over so that his palm is facing up. It feels like he could be holding Loki’s hand, and his fingers tighten spasmodically for an instant.

“Help me,” Thor says. “Magic is your thing. Tell me where to go, who to talk to. I’ll do it. Just give me a place to start.”

“To do what?”

“Bring you back.”

Loki breathes in deeply and looks away, but he moves closer, so that now their arms are overlapping. Thor shudders and fights to hold still with every fiber of his being. 

“Why would you want that?” Loki asks. “I’ve only ever brought you pain.”

“That’s not true. Not even a little bit.”

“You would really try to do such a thing?”

“I swear it,” Thor says. “I know that I can live without you, I’ve done it before—” and here Loki tightens his mouth and closes his eyes “—but I don’t want to do it again. I’ve had enough of it. The Norns have taken so much. I’m going to take something back.”

“And damn the consequences?”

“Damn the consequences.”

Loki looks back at him finally, looks into his eyes, and Thor sees his own desperation written on his brother’s face as well.

Thor can already feel the dream dissolving though. The last thing he sees before he wakes is Loki sighing his name, his fingertips sinking into Thor’s face as he runs his hand down Thor’s cheek in a pantomime of touch. 

Thor reaches up to touch his own face and finds a tear track for every one of Loki’s fingers.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> trigger warning for some suicidal thoughts

“Surely you understand,” Freyr is saying. He slouches indolently in his high seat, almost bored, as though he were having tea instead of delivering ultimatums.

“I’m afraid not,” Thor says, attempting a winning smile. He can tell there are far too many teeth in it and that his eyes are too hard. As always, he wishes he had his brother here. Loki would know what to say in this situation. Would defuse it somehow, turn it around, make it into an opportunity for gain instead of loss.

“We simply can’t have Asgardians forming an army,” Freyja says. “Any foreign military on our soil would be unacceptable, but Asgard—”

“Asgardia,” Thor says, butting in.

“— _Asgardia_ doubly so. With your people’s history of violence, bloodshed…”

“...conquest...” Freyr adds.

“...invasion…”

“...treaty breaking…”

“...it simply cannot stand,” Freya finishes. “You must disband these…”

“...’training sessions’...” Freyr says with audible quotation marks, his lip curling in a delicate sneer—

“...or our hospitality will come to an end,” Freyja says with finality.

Thor is clenching his jaw so tightly it takes him a second to unhinge it.

“We are but five hundred souls,” he points out, trying for as reasonable a tone as he can. “Altogether. We have perhaps twenty people training at the most. We are hardly an empire. It is hardly an army.”

“It hardly matters,” Freyr says. “The Vanir will not foster the creation of a new Asgardian military, no matter the size. Disband it or leave Vanaheim, those are your options.”

The dismissal is clear, and Thor turns smartly on his heel, his cape snapping behind him. Electricity crackles from his feet as he strides angrily from the throne room. The flicker at the corner of his eye is constant right now, and he shakes his head once or twice, violently, trying to jog the mechanical eyeball. He is practically snarling by the time he gets back to the Asgardian settlement, and ready to rip the fake eye clear from his head and embed it in the nearest tree.

“What—” Val says as he stomps angrily past.

“Get me Eitri.”

*

“I’m a blacksmith, I don’t know what you expect me to do,” Eitri rumbles. “Besides—” He holds up his hands, gone at the wrist and replaced with lumps of heavy metal. 

Thor snarls again. His mood is as foul as it’s been in ages. He grabs Eitri by the forearm and summons Stormbreaker to his outstretched hand, and without any preamble or warning takes them to New York.

“You have _got_ to stop doing this,” Tony Stark says after he recovers from the shock of Thor and a very large Eitri materializing in the middle of his suite. “What if I’d been naked?”

“Then you would attend to me naked,” Thor growls.

Stark holds his hands up in a conciliatory gesture. “Ok. Ok. Geez, space royalty.”

“Fix him,” Thor demands, thrusting Eitri’s hands towards Stark. “And fix this.” He pops out his prosthetic eye and holds it out expectantly. 

Stark yelps and grimaces, but he takes it gingerly with his fingertips. He looks at the eye briefly, his mouth already open to say something, then snaps his jaw shut and does a double take and looks at the eye again.

“Wow,” is all he says. “And hello to you too, by the way.”

Thor finally deflates just a bit. “Hello, Stark.”

*

Maybe it’s because he’s sleeping high in a tower, but that night Thor meets Loki at the top of the tallest spire in Asgard.

“This is where we came the first time we flew together,” Thor says, looking down over the edge. The spire is only decorative and there’s no way up here except for flying. _Was_ no way up here.

“Gods, what a day that was,” Loki says. “I’d never been more disappointed in my life, or more proud—”

“Or more terrified,” Thor says. “When we lifted off the ground I think you grabbed my arm so hard your fingers met through my bicep.” A warm feeling has stirred in his chest at Loki’s words. Loki had been proud of him.

“I was so scared you might drop me.”

Thor remembers another time he was holding on to his brother, a time when he did drop him, into the embrace of the Void. Loki must see it in his face, because he quick to come and stand in front of Thor, trying to catch his eyes. “No no no no,” Loki says. “Not that. Don’t think of that. I’m a fool, I’m sorry.”

“ _I’m_ sorry,” Thor says. “That I couldn’t save you. That...every time...I couldn’t…”

“Not now,” Loki is saying. “Please. It’s over. Not now. We have so little time.”

Thor masters his breathing and holds out his hand for Loki to lay his own ghostly hand on top of, which he does.

“Sometimes,” Loki says, “I almost feel like you can see me. In...waking life. Sometimes you look right at me, for just a split second.”

“Do you mean…” Thor struggles to put his thoughts in order. “When you say that you’re always with me, do you really mean that literally?”

“Yes, you oaf,” Loki said affectionately. “Didn’t I tell you?”

“I don’t know, I thought you were speaking—poetically, or—”

“No, Thor. I’m there. And here. It’s strange. I was with you when our ship exploded—I sort of shoved you at that rescue ship, don’t ask me how, I just _wanted to_ , and it happened—and I was with you when you went to Nidavellir—on Earth I was screaming at you to chop off that beast’s arm but you didn’t hear me—”

Thor feels like he might break down all over again. 

“So,” Thor chokes out, “have you seen—” He has to stop talking because if he says anything else he’ll sob.

“Everything,” Loki says. “When you cry, I cry with you.”

Thor shakes his head mutely. He blinks and one tear falls down his face.

Loki steps closer, puts his lips to Thor’s cheek, an insubstantial bloom of warmth.

“The day you flew us here all those centuries ago,” Loki whispers. “I wanted to kiss you.”

Thor’s heart pounds crazily in his chest. “Brother—” But he is already blinking awake.

*

Thor goes back to Asgardia with an extremely happy dwarf (‘Look, Thor, I can scratch my nose! I can pick up this piece of paper!’), a freshly polished eyeball (there was nothing wrong with it that Stark could figure out), and a few new photographs.

Official fighting practice with weapons has to end, but Sif begins what she calls a “moving meditation” class.

“This is just _glima_ ,” Thor says, amused, as he watches Erik and Veria wrestle in the mud. 

“Well hopefully those tight ass Vanir won’t know the difference,” Sif smirks.

It’s a poor compromise, and Thor fears that it is only the first of many that his people will have to endure the longer that they stay here. Thor always knew that this wasn’t a permanent solution, but he is no closer to figuring out the permanent solution yet.

And in the meantime, life has to go on.

Every morning after Thor’s debriefing with Val and Sif, he holds court. It’s ridiculous to call it that, as his throne is simply a chair and unless it’s raining his “great hall” is just the open space outside his longhouse (when it is raining, they simply move it into the longhouse), but the name has stuck. Anyone who wishes the ear of the King knows to approach him at this time, be it for a grievance, a suggestion, a request, or simply to say hello.

Thor’s longhouse is separate from the rest of the new buildings. It’s next to a stand of dark evergreen forest, and a grassy meadow slopes gently away from it until the trees pick up again on the far side. This particular morning it’s painfully sunny and Thor has to squint to see anything at all.

“The children,” a woman is saying. Thor can barely make her features out, backlit as she is. “I know there aren’t many of them, but they need schooling. We have no resources for them, no books. Please, Your Highness.”

Thor briefly considers calling in some cloud cover, but decides that it would be a flagrant misuse of his powers.

“Of course,” he says. Thor rubs his eyes, squeezes them closed against the relentless brightness, and when he opens them again, he sees him.

There, across the meadow, at the edge of the far treeline, his face a pale smudge against the dark backdrop.

Loki.

Thor leaps to his feet, but in the space between one blink and the next, Loki is gone.

“Your Highness?” the woman says, taken aback.

“I’m sorry,” Thor says. Then he addresses the rest of the people waiting to talk to him this morning. “I’m sorry,” he says again. “I must postpone court today. Please come back tomorrow.”

Before anyone can even open their mouth to protest, Thor is summoning Stormbreaker and taking to the air.

He had seen _Loki_. Even though he’s certain he’s been seeing his brother in the same spirit plane he’d seen his father, even though Loki has told him information that only Loki could know, even though Loki has told Thor, explicitly, that he is with Thor always, there is still a part of Thor that hasn’t believed it. That’s convinced that it’s all just delusion and hopeless yearning manifesting as visions. That he is simply mad with grief.

But Thor just saw him. With his waking eyes.

Maybe the flickers he’s been seeing...maybe…

He has to know. And he doesn’t need anyone else bearing witness. Either he will see Loki again or he will not, and his heart will break either way. Better to keep this to himself.

Stormbreaker carries him up and away, the trees and rocks and people shrinking until if he wanted he could reach out and pluck them. But he doesn’t want to. He flies until the foothills have turned into mountains proper, and finally sets down in a place that reminds him of the clearing where he and Loki had carved their runes on Asgard.

Back then he’d had his hair and his eye and his hammer and his brother, and the easy confidence of youth. He’d never thought to lose any of them, yet here he is now with none of them.

But maybe…

“Loki!” Thor calls out. “Brother!” He spins in a slow circle, casting his gaze everywhere—the ground, the trees, the sky. “LOKI!”

A flicker in the corner of his eye. He whips his head around. Nothing. Sparks dance at his fingertips. He tries to get himself under control. _There_ , to his left—a dark shape, a spreading lightness in Thor’s heart—and with a raucous cry, a raven bursts through the trees.

With a wordless growl, Thor blasts a rock apart with lightning.

“BROTHER!” Thor cries, the word tearing a jagged path from his throat. 

The wind sighs through the trees, sending their needled tops swaying. It’s still bright, so bright, and the sky is an aching bottomless blue, and Thor wishes he could simply drown in it. Drown and be done. Just being alive right now through all of this is the hardest thing he’s ever had to do.

“Where are you?” Thor begs, his voice hoarse. “Show me, please. I need you. I need you. Please.” He has gotten so soft. Soft and weak and desperate. Broken, maybe.

Thor gets no answer but the silent trees. He sinks to his knees, his cape puddling around him like blood. He sets Stormbreaker on the ground in front of him, then slowly puts his hands on his thighs and closes his eyes and wills the tears away.

None fall, but they clump his lashes together and fracture the world into crystalline shards.

The soft sound of the wind through the pine branches slowly resolves into something else.

“Shh,” Thor hears. The voice is gentle. Beloved. “I'm here, I'm here. Shh-shh-shh.”

Thor opens his eyes. Though he can't feel them, there are four hands on his thighs, not two.

Slowly, agonizingly slowly, Thor lifts his eyes. He follows the hands up to the slender arms, which are, as always, covered to the wrist in a green tunic. Up the arms to the fall of dark hair against a shoulder, the silky strands catching on fabric in loose curls. Thor can hardly bear to continue, wants to drag this out as long as possible. Savor it, memorize it. He’s afraid that it will never happen again. But he keeps going. The familiar curve of a jaw is next, pale skin and pointed chin and—thin pink lips—and then—then—Thor finally raises his eyes completely and blue meets green and he is looking his brother full in the face.

“Oh,” Loki squeaks breathlessly, and falls backwards out of his crouch to land flat on his ass. He makes a choking sound. “You can see—can you—see—”

“I see you,” Thor breathes, then, louder, “I _see_ you.” He won’t cry, he won’t, he’s cried so much already, he won’t cry.

Loki buries his face in his hands and does it for both of them. His shoulders are shaking with the force of his sobbing. Thor doesn’t know what to do. He wants to take Loki in his arms, but he can’t, he wants to cry too, but he can’t—he feels like he has to be the strong one right now for some reason—he wants to whoop with joy and collapse in sorrow both.

“Loki,” Thor says, strangled and thin. Loki looks up at him and his face crumples anew and he hugs his arms around his middle.

“I th-thought...I don’t know. Ever since…” Loki takes a deep breath. “Ever since Thanos. I haven’t known if I’m alive or dead. I th-think I’m dead but I’m here? And I don’t know. And. I thought. Maybe I was just mad. Or dreaming. Or. Being punished. Or—” His voice ends in another choked sob and Thor reaches for him instinctively, pulling himself back at the last second.

“You can see me,” Loki says again, and it’s still watery, but he breaks into a heartstopping smile, pure and sweet and beautiful. Thor fears he’ll simply die on the spot under the strength of it. Wants to. Maybe then they would be together truly.

"Yes,” Thor agrees. “And I’m never going to let you out of my sight again.”


	5. Chapter 5

“What’s gotten into you?” Sif asks Thor.

“Hmm?” Thor says, distracted.

“First of all, nobody has been able to stop talking about you taking off during the middle of petitions suddenly the other day, which, by the way, you still haven’t explained to me. Me. Your oldest friend.”

“Hmm.”

“And second of all, you haven’t been able to stop smiling since then. Thor. Thor, are you listening to me? Hello?” Sif snaps her fingers in front of his face and Thor finally shakes his head and turns to look at her properly.

Her words start filtering through his brain. “Haven’t I?” he says mildly.

Loki is standing several feet away and he starts snickering. “You have looked rather like a mooncalf,” he says. It turns out that nobody can see Loki except for Thor, and Loki’s been taking full advantage of it over the last few days. He knows full well that Thor can’t respond directly to any of his jabs or antics without looking like he’s gone fully mad, and Loki hasn’t been making it easy on him.

And Thor, true to his word, has yet to let Loki out of his sight.

Sif sighs in disgust. “Well, whenever you’re ready to let on, I’ll be waiting.”

“Mm,” Thor says again, his attention already back on Loki, who is doing a wicked pantomime of Sif’s exasperated stance down to the very facial expression, and Thor finds himself grinning into (apparently empty) air again.

He doesn’t know why he hasn’t told anyone about Loki. Maybe it’s because when he thinks about it all he can envision is the pity in their eyes when they tell him he’s losing his mind. Even if he is losing his mind, he’s losing it quite happily at the moment and he’d rather not burst his own bubble.

Val is waiting off to the side and she and Sif walk off, muttering to each other and throwing Thor concerned looks that he utterly fails to notice.

“You’re going to get me in trouble,” Thor murmurs, trying to move his lips as little as possible.

Loki laughs. “It’s my favorite hobby.”

“Trickster,” Thor says fondly.

*

Thor has tried every which way he can think of to take Loki’s picture. Simply taking one doesn’t work, of course, so they try extra long exposures, every different light they can think of, taking the picture through water, through smoke, through a tiny cloud that Thor summons for just this purpose. Thinking perhaps the false eye has something to do with it, Thor manages to rig up something to connect the Starkphone to the eyeball to take the picture, but that doesn’t work either.

“I don’t know why you want one so badly,” Loki says. “I’m right here.”

“I just do,” Thor says stubbornly.

It’s getting well into summer and Vanaheim’s moons don’t come out until late at night. Phosphorescent mushrooms faintly illuminate the path to Thor’s longhouse. Thor can see them through the bottoms of Loki’s feet as they walk.

“Do you need to sleep?” Thor had asked him the first night.

“No.”

“What do you do when I sleep?”

“Sometimes I wander. But I watch you, mostly. Sometimes you would pull me into your dreams with you. I never could anticipate which nights it would be. But every time you closed your eyes I would hope...and I didn’t want to be gone in case that made it not happen...”

This night, Thor undresses and arranges himself under the covers. He scoots over to the edge and pats the empty space next to him. Slowly, Loki comes over to stand next to the bed.

“You don’t actually have to make room for me,” Loki admonishes. He's still completely insubstantial.

“I know. I want to.”

Loki lays himself down on the bed stretched out next to Thor. They lie on their sides facing each other, Loki fully clothed, Thor bare from the waist up, his nipples pebbled with the chill of the night air.

They regard each other for long moments, content simply to drink each other in.

“The particolored eyes suit you,” Loki whispers. His cheek is resting on one of his hands, and the other reaches out to hover over Thor’s face.

“You said the same about my patch,” Thor says, amused.

“That suited you as well. Everything suits you.”

“Everything?”

“Everything but grief.”

Thor closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. Remembers the last dream they had together. _I wanted to kiss you_ , Loki had told him. It still makes his heart pound.

No one has ever accused Thor of cowardice.

“If I could touch you,” Thor says quietly, eyes still closed, “I’d touch you here.” He opens his eyes and lets his hand skim over the dip in Loki’s waist, floating a breath above it, trying to preserve the illusion that he _could_ touch if only he lowered his hand.

“Where else?” Loki whispers.

“Here,” Thor says, splaying his hand out in the air over Loki’s heart. He fancies that he can feel it speed up, although of course he can’t. They’re both breathing a little heavier than they were moments ago.

“Where else?”

Thor reaches up as if he were going to cup Loki’s jaw, his cheek, thread his fingers into Loki’s hair. “Here.”

Loki draws in a shuddering breath. His eyes are fixed on Thor’s face.

“Where else?

Slowly, Thor holds up his index finger and middle finger together, presses a long kiss to them with his own lips, then brings them to ghost over Loki’s.

“Here.”

Loki blinks and one tear falls down his cheek.

“Would you let me do that?” Thor asks, his chest tight, his heart lodged in his throat.

“Yes.”

Some time later, Thor falls asleep with his and Loki’s arms overlapping each other, tiny spots of warmth where his hip and calf and foot overlap his brother’s body too, and for the first time since Loki’s death he sleeps deeply and well.

*

It’s a gloomy day, gray and threatening rain, and the sunlight is thin and watery despite the season.

“Who is that?” Thor asks, squinting across the field to where Erik and another boy are wrestling.

“Who? Bjorn?”

“No, next to them. There.”

Val looks in the direction Thor is pointing, but she shakes her head and looks back at Thor, concerned.

“Are you alright?” she asks. “There’s nobody there.”

“Yes there is,” Thor insists. “I can see him.”

Thor glances to Loki for confirmation. Loki is standing off to Thor’s left, arms crossed, and he’s squinting at where Thor was pointing too. He looks back at Thor and shakes his head slightly, telling Thor to drop it for now. Confused, Thor looks again. There is clearly someone there, slightly hazy through the gloom, and Thor doesn’t recognize their face. Is it one of the Vanir? They’ve never come to Asgardia before.

“Must be this damn eyeball again,” Thor grumbles. He’ll have to talk to Loki about this later.

Duty keeps Thor occupied until late afternoon, when he finally manages a few moments to himself.

“What was going on earlier?” Thor asks Loki. They’re in Thor’s longhouse and Loki is pacing.

“I’ve seen that man before,” Loki says. He’s wringing his hands and he reminds Thor so much of Frigga that his throat feels tight. “I think...I think he’s dead too.”

“Oh.”

Silence falls for a few moments, Thor thinking, Loki pacing.

“How many other dead are there?”

“I haven’t seen anyone else. I think...most of us don’t tend to stick around.”

“But you have.”

“I have.”

“Why?”

Loki laughs bitterly. “All I have are guesses.”

“What are your guesses?”

Loki turns and comes to stand before Thor. His face is serious, no trace of sarcasm. “You,” he says simply. “I didn’t want to leave you.”

“I didn’t want you to leave me either.”

“I know.”

This kind of painful honesty is uncharacteristic for Loki, and Thor realizes that it’s been this way ever since they started seeing each other in his dreams.

“Why are you so open with me now, when your heart has been closed to me for so long?” Thor asks. It’s a question he never would have asked before, because Loki would definitely never have answered it. Would have ducked, evaded, said something nasty, turned it around somehow. He thinks Loki might answer it now though.

Loki turns away and hugs his arms across his middle.

“Losing everything has a way of changing your perspective on things,” Loki says softly. “All that rage I had, and what has it ever gotten me?”

The desire to take Loki in his arms so strong it physically hurts. Thor wants to hold his brother to his chest, bury his face in his hair, kiss them both breathless, then come up for air and do it again. He wants to fall asleep touching and wake up touching and he wants to do it every day for the rest of his life. That he can’t is unconscionable.

And Thor has never, ever taken well to being told what he can and can’t do.

“I asked you before and you didn’t answer me,” Thor says. “Will you answer me now? How do I bring you back for true? Tell me where to start. Who to talk to. What books to find. Anything at all.”

“You’re mad,” Loki says. “It can’t be done. Can you even imagine what the price might be?”

“I don’t care.”

“Don’t say things like that. I’m not worth it.”

“You’re worth everything.”

Loki’s face twists in something that’s far too painful to be a smile.

“I should leave,” Loki says, and drags a shaky hand across his face. “I should move on to...wherever. Valhalla. Hel. Will they let me in? I really don’t know. Maybe I could just wander the universe, explore all the places I didn’t get around to before—”

“Loki—”

“ _Enough_ , Thor. Can’t you see? Me staying here is driving us both to despair.”

“No,” Thor insists. “You staying here is the only thing keeping me sane.”

Loki barks out a laugh. “Your friends certainly don’t think so.”

“Don’t leave me again,” Thor pleads. Terror has started to take root in his chest. “Gods, please don’t, I can’t—I can’t—” He’s far too choked up to continue talking. He curses himself for bringing it up, they could have just stayed like this, it’s a half life but at least it’s a life at all—but if Loki leaves—

“Shhh,” Loki is soothing. “Don’t cry, darling, please. I’ll stay. I’ll stay.”

It’s ridiculous. Loki is the one who’s dead and yet he is the one comforting Thor instead of the other way around. But his litany starts calming the fear, tamps it down, and Thor breathes deep and steadies himself.

“‘Darling,’” Thor says, voice as normal as he can make it. “I like the sound of that.”

“Darling, sweetheart, sunshine. Ass. Insufferable lout.”

Thor is smiling now, Loki’s words spreading warm like honey.

“Cow,” Thor says.

“Insufferable lout,” Loki repeats, a smile starting to tease the corner of his mouth.

“Love.”

They stare at each other helplessly.

“We’re a right pair of fools, aren’t we?” Loki says.

“We always have been.”

*

Freyr and Freyja’s great hall may be open to the air, but the rest of the palace complex is a sprawling affair of buildings of all different types, nestled in and around the trees, sometimes up in their very canopies. Spindly walkways connect many of them. Some buildings are marble shot through with veins of green and black. Some are wood. Some are _living_ wood. Some are carved from the granite bedrock of the land itself.

The library is a tower made of pink sandstone and the inside is a curious blend of traditional architecture and modern technology. The ceiling soars hundreds of feet into the air and a walkway spirals from the ground around the outside wall, carrying would-be scholars up and up the stacks of books. Vanaheim is old and the collection is vast. There is everything from stone tablets written in languages millennia dead to musty vellum tomes bound in dragon hide to paper books from Midgard to holographic projections stored on tiny chips.

Thor didn’t forget the woman who petitioned him about education, and he has managed to successfully negotiate use of the library for Asgardia’s children.

He’s going to take advantage of it for himself, too.

“What are you looking for?” Loki asks over Thor’s shoulder. He’s leaning over it with his arms behind his back trying to read what Thor is entering into the database.

“Oh you know. Things.”

Thor strides away from the terminal and Loki moves in, reading what Thor’s left up on the screen.

“We’ve been over this,” Loki says, scurrying to catch up. “I’m _dead_ , Thor.”

“You’ve been dead before,” Thor points out. “Obviously it doesn’t have to stick.” His eyes scan the shelves for the item he’s looking for.

Loki sighs, exasperated. “No, not that one,” he says irritably when Thor reaches for a book. “I’ve read that one, there’s nothing useful in it.”

“Which one, then. This one?”

“No.”

Thor gives Loki a look. He deliberately pulls down a book that he knows won’t be any help in the slightest and watches with satisfaction as Loki clucks his tongue.

“You are absurdly annoying. Try that one,” Loki says, pointing at a slim blue book with silver lettering that Thor can’t read.

“I don’t know that language.”

“I do.”

Thor knows he must be a sight, wandering around muttering to himself and giving pointed looks to thin air, but he can’t really bring himself to care all that much.

He stays in the library for hours, hours that he doesn’t really have to spare, but he can’t tear himself away. He’s commandeered a table that’s now piled dangerously high with books and scrolls and various electronic readers (some in languages only he can read, some in languages only Loki can read), and he’s filled half a notebook with clues and leads and diagrams, and he feels no closer to a solution than when he started.

“We’ll try again tomorrow,” Thor says finally, slumping back in his chair and rubbing his tired eyes. “We’ll find something.”

“As you like,” Loki says. His eyes are sad, though, and Thor can tell when he’s being humored.

“Tomorrow,” Thor says firmly.


	6. Chapter 6

Thor lets out a long low whistle when Sif answers her door. She’s traded her usual armor and leathers for an asymmetrical gown, one shoulder and one leg both bare; it fades from sapphire to sky blue and the edges are embroidered with silver thread and moonstones. Her hair is a cascading tumble of chestnut waves and her cheekbones shimmer.

“Gorgeous, isn’t she?” Val says, coming up behind Sif and pinching her bottom. The glare that Sif levels at both of them could wither paint. Thor laughs.

Val has opted for her dress armor tonight, polished to a gleaming white, and she’s done her hair up elaborately. She offers her arm to Sif, who tucks her own arm through it, and they join Thor out on the front step.

“Ready to go?” Thor asks them. Veria grunts her assent from behind his left shoulder. She has given no concession to the evening at all and remains in her customary armor, customary axe on her hip.

“Wait a minute,” Val says. Her eyes rake up and down Thor’s body. “ _What_ is this you’re wearing?”

Thor steps back and spreads his arms wide, inviting them to look. He’s in a sleeveless tunic, black with a high split collar, and it fits snugly around his chest before falling in delicate drapes down to his knees, and when he walks it swirls around his legs, exposing his burgundy leggings and high wrapped boots. It’s not a style he’s accustomed to wearing, but Loki has assured him that it’s all the rage in Vanaheim right now. Golden snake armbands crawl up one forearm and the opposite bicep. (Loki had smiled knowingly at those when Thor had chosen them)

“You like?” Thor asks with an arch of his eyebrow.

“You’ll do,” Val smirks at him. “I think my date wins the evening though.”

“Not even close,” Loki murmurs in Thor’s ear, and Thor smiles to himself.

They make a damn fine sight arriving at Freyr and Freyja’s birthday gala. The King of Asgardia and his deadly entourage are the talk of the evening.

This is normally the kind of event that would make Thor’s toes curl. The shiny veneer of beautiful clothing and food and music does a poor job of hiding the vicious politicking going on underneath it. And Thor has no stomach for machinations, having always preferred instead to get by on sheer charisma, so these kind of parties have always felt more like a chore than anything else.

Not to mention the fact that Thor’s easy affability of old has been in very short supply lately.

By all rights, he should be itching to flee. But for some reason tonight he finds his mood is not sour. In fact, he feels nearly happy. The food is good. The drinks are good. His friends are in good spirits. Val and Sif are dancing, and laughing, and stealing kisses. Veria has disappeared from his shoulder and he finally finds her off in a corner with a pretty painted courtier half her size sitting on her knee and hanging off her neck; she grips his waist and whispers something in his ear and he flushes scarlet down to his neck. Thor raises his drink to her in silent toast and she winks back at him.

Many of the people that come up to talk with Thor have pointed comments and obvious ulterior motives, but he elects to ignore them, putting on instead a facade of cheerful obliviousness. The pettiness would ordinarily annoy him, but tonight it just seems so pointless and funny. All these people jockeying for scraps of power. What do any of them know of true leadership or loss?

Loki is a constant murmur in his ear, half insults and half advice.

“There’s Halfor the Bold,” Loki is saying. “Wasn’t so bold when he screamed like a little boy when I put a snake in his cup.” Or, “Watch out for that one, he’s nastier than he looks, he left a trail of dead whores from here to Alfheim.”

“How do you know all this?” Thor asks, masking his words in his cup.

“I was King for several years, you know. I had to host most of these imbeciles at one point or another. Oh look, there’s Lady Tanskriva. Over there, the one who bears an unfortunate resemblance to a goat. She tried to seduce me when I was father.”

Thor chokes and coughs and he can just _feel_ Loki’s smirk.

Loki looks as he has the entire time that Thor has been able to see him. Black leggings, long sleeved green crossover tunic, loose wavy hair. His face unlined, young looking somehow. Thor wonders if this is a form Loki’s picked himself, or if the universe has simply chosen for him to appear this way.

This might be any one of a hundred state dinners they’ve attended together over the years, if not for the fact that people are simply _walking through_ Loki regularly as though he weren’t there.

“Does it feel odd?” Thor manages to ask at some point as a woman with a peacock mask swishes through Loki, supremely unconcerned.

Loki merely shrugs. “A little chilly, maybe.”

“Hmm. When I touch you it feels warm.”

Loki smiles at that.

Thor grows loose with drink as the night carries on, but even though his senses are slightly dulled he can’t miss the way that Loki is looking at him. It suffuses Thor’s belly and chest with warmth and also guilt. Not guilt that Loki is looking at him like he wants to eat him, or guilt that Thor wishes the same thing, ardently—but guilt that he feels no guilt. That his brother is dead and Thor is surely sullying his memory and that he doesn’t care.

Is it possible to commit incest with someone who isn’t even alive?

Would Loki being alive change these feelings inside of him?

Thor looks at Loki looking at him and their gazes burn into each other. Surely not.

Freyr and Freyja sail through their own gala like great ships parting carelessly through the waves. They are ancient. They are brother and sister, born on the same day from the same womb, and they are lovers, and they are consorts, and they rule Vanaheim together, and Thor is sick with jealousy.

Thor has an invitation to sleep at the palace, as do all the guests, but he elects not to. He needs…

He looks at Loki and swallows. He just needs.

They make their way back to Thor’s longhouse together. If Loki were solid, Thor would be pulling him along by the hand, eager, would crowd him up against the post and kiss him breathless before he could even get the door unlatched. Would pull his clothes off, heedless of how they ripped. Instead, they walk in silence, on edge, eyes roaming over each other and skittering away.

When they get inside, Thor sits down heavily on the edge of his bed and puts his face in his hands. His head is spinning.

“Brother.” It sounds like Loki is testing the word out, seeing how it fits on his tongue this night.

Thor looks up. Loki is standing in a patch of moonlight slanting in through the window and he is pearly and nearly translucent, all aglow. Aflame. Beautiful beyond measure. His arms are outstretched and the look on his face makes Thor’s heart break in half. Loki swallows and Thor follows the motion of his throat with his eyes.

“Undress for me?” Loki says. Then, bolder, “Let me see you.”

Thor draws in a shaky breath. Talking about kissing is one thing. This is something else altogether.

“Are you sure?” Thor asks. He’s not sure if the question is directed at Loki or himself.

“Please.”

Thor stands slowly. Takes a deep breath,

He starts with the armbands, tugging each one down and off and setting them on the table with a heavy thump. Loki leans back against the windowsill, wrists bent, and licks his lips. His eyes are huge.

Thor unwraps his boots next, unwinding each one until he can push them off. He flexes his bare toes against the wood floor. This is still innocent. He could stop. He could leave this line uncrossed.

His heart is pounding.

He raises a hand to the fastenings at the side of his tunic, then pauses, looking down.

Loki’s ghostly hand comes to lay overtop of his own.

“I’ve overstepped,” Loki says. “I’m sorry.”

Thor says nothing, but begins undoing his tunic, and hears Loki’s quick intake of breath. The tunic falls open in the front and he shrugs each shoulder out, one by one, rolling them, and lets the tunic fall to the floor.

Loki’s taken a step back. His chest is rising and falling rapidly.

Thor is in nothing but his breeches now. Thor has always been comfortable with nudity; the body holds no shame for him. Loki has seen him shirtless dozens, hundreds of times. Thousands. This is different.

The knot at the front of his breeches yields to his fumbling fingers. He loosens the laces. Runs his hands around the waistband, pulling them down his hips just a bit. Just enough to tease. His cock is already hardening. Loki can see it, he can tell.

Thor finally looks back up at Loki. Loki raises his eyes from Thor’s cock to his face and the unmistakable hunger there makes Thor’s blood boil. He shimmies his breeches the rest of the way down and kicks them off, his cock springing free to jut straight in front of him like the prow of a ship.

“Here I am,” Thor says. He’s standing still, his arms at his sides. Achingly hard. Achingly sad. Just...aching. “Is this what you wanted?”

Loki is positively drinking him in. The scrutiny is almost too much. Thor opens his mouth to speak again, but Loki steps in and shushes him with a finger hovering over his lips. He runs his fingertips down Thor’s chest, ten trails of insubstantial warmth, then down his sides, across his belly, over his hips. Thor fears he might cry. He can feel the tears locked in his throat. But he’s cried so much already, he can’t, he can’t.

And this? Well. It’s not so sad, is it?

“Will you touch yourself for me?” Loki whispers. His voice is ragged.

“Loki,” Thor pleads helplessly.

“Please.”

That’s two ‘pleases’ tonight, which is two more than Thor can remember hearing in a long while. He takes himself in his hand and strokes, once, drawing a soft _ahh_ from his own throat.

“That’s it,” Loki encourages. “Show me. Let me see you. Let me hear you.”

Thor licks his hand, strokes himself again.

“You tell _me_ ,” Thor says roughly. “How… _ahh_ , how you—”

“How I’ve wanted you for years?” Loki’s voice is right in Thor’s ear, sending shivers down his spine all the way to his toes, making him shudder involuntarily. “Because I have. How I’ve dreamed of seeing you like this? So hard. For me. All for me.”

“For you,” Thor agrees.

“You could have bedded anyone tonight, but you’re here. Oh, brother, the things I would do to you if I could.”

Thor is fucking into his fist now. Loki puts his hand over Thor’s, an eerie doubled overlay, and he closes his eyes and he brow screws up in concentration. Slowly, Loki’s hand grows less translucent, more opaque, until the only hand that Thor can see on his cock is Loki’s. Thor gasps. It’s still his own hand he’s fucking into, but if he just...lets his mind go a bit sideways…

“Just listen to my voice,” Loki murmurs. “Listen to my voice and look at my hand. See? Your pleasure is coming from me. All from me.”

“Brother,” Thor pants. “ _Ahh_ , gods. Loki.”

Loki keeps humming the most deliciously wicked things into his ear and it’s as much Loki’s voice and the wildness of the situation as it is anything else when Thor spends up and all over himself and down to drip over their fists and spatter on the floor.

Thor can’t help himself and he reaches up to cup Loki’s neck before his brain can send the signal to stop. His hand meets only air, and Loki smiles at him, tight-lipped. 

“I very much enjoyed that,” Loki says.

Loki's own breeches have an impressive tent in the front and Thor is struck by the sudden inappropriate and hysterical urge to laugh. It bubbles out of him, uncontrollable.

“What?” Loki says, cautiously amused.

“You—me—us.” Thor waves his hands at the entire situation. “Look at us. A dead man with an erection, and his brother moaning his name as he comes all over himself. _Norns_.” His laughter is edged with tears and it would only take a small push to shove him from one to the other. “Can you even—that is, can you—” Now that the heat of the moment has somewhat dissipated, Thor finds his tongue rather tied.

“Yes,” Loki says simply. His eyes glitter mischievously in the moonlight. “What do you think I did half the time I was watching you sleep?”

“ _Norns_ ,” Thor swears again, and huffs out another incredulous laugh before pulling himself back together. Loki is still regarding him with amusement, clearly enjoying the spectacle Thor is making of himself. “Would you?” Thor asks, serious now. “For me?”

It turns out Loki would, and he does. Thor’s world shifts when he hears his own name in his brother’s desire-roughened voice, and again when Loki brings himself to release, his body tensing and flexing, bowed up into an arc, naked and taut and beautiful on Thor’s bed.

They lie there for a long time afterward, running their fingertips through each other. Shivering. There is a hole in Thor’s chest the exact size and shape of the man looking into his eyes. Thor wonders if they would ever have come to this if Loki had lived, or if it had taken his death to break down this barrier. But such thoughts aren’t really even worth thinking. The reality is that it happened, that it _is_ happening, right now. That Thor loves his brother in all the ways that it’s possible for one person to love another.

“I miss you,” he says miserably.

“I’m right here,” Loki whispers.

“I love you.”

Loki just smiles at him, tight-lipped and sad.

“Don’t you love me too?” Thor asks.

“Of course I do.”

“Why won’t you say it?”

“I’ve been saying it. Haven’t you been listening? My every action proclaims it. Would you have the words from me too?”

“Yes.”

“Oaf. I love you. Does that satisfy your juvenile complaint?”

Warmth in Thor’s chest.

“Cow.”

“Idiot.”

Thor finally sleeps.


	7. Chapter 7

Thor opens the door to his longhouse and steps out into the soft morning light. He’s laughing at something Loki’s just said, but the laughter dies on his lips. Valkyrie is waiting for him, slouched against one of the posts holding up his eaves, and her face looks anything other than amused.

“What is it?” he asks.

“You,” she says flatly. “We need to talk.”

“What—”

She cuts him off. “Look. I know...I know a thing or two about grief, ok? I know how hard it is to lose your...family. The people you love. I _know_.”

Thor knows his face has gone hard.

“You think I’ve gone mad,” he says.

“I don’t think anything. But people are starting to _talk_. You’re making them nervous.”

Thor clenches his jaw. Looks around for Loki. Doesn’t see him anywhere. Supposes it’s for the best that Loki excused himself from this conversation.

“See?” Val says. “That. That’s what I’m talking about. You don’t pay attention when people are talking. You look around, like—like you’re looking at something that isn’t there. Focused on nothing. Muttering to yourself.”

“It’s not nothing,” Thor nearly growls.

Val takes a deep breath. “I’m not telling you how to grieve. But you might want to do it in private is all I’m saying. Or—hell, come to me. We can drink ourselves blind.”

“You do think I’m losing it though,” Thor says. Val fidgets, looks away.

“I’ve lost it myself,” she says finally. “I don’t judge.”

“It’s not—” Thor rubs his face, squeezes his eyes shut hard. “It’s Loki.”

“I know you miss him—”

“NO. It’s Loki. He’s...here.”

Val looks at him with genuine concern now. It makes Thor irritated in a way he hasn’t experienced in awhile. That she thinks he’s crazy but is gently humoring him. He can barely tolerate Loki humoring him, much less anyone else.

“His spirit,” Thor says. “It didn’t move on. He’s here.”

“I thought I saw Sigrid so many times,” Val says. Like he’s a spooked animal she has to gentle. “But it’s not real, Thor. It never is.”

“He is real,” Thor insists. “He’s the one who told me where to find Sif.”

Val curses.

“In the library, he translates books for me that I can’t read.”

“Thor—”

He holds up his hand. “Don’t.”

She puts her hands on her hips and purses her mouth into a thin line.

“Come on,” she says finally. “People are waiting for us.”

*

Thor goes to the library to research three or four times before he finally finds something useful.

“A-ha!” he exclaims softly, and when Loki quirks a brow he flips the book around for him to see. “Look,” Thor says excitedly, trying to keep his voice low. Nobody is around though, so he doesn’t try to pretend Loki isn’t there. “It doesn’t really help us exactly, but _look_.”

Thor has been wondering this entire time why he can see Loki, and perhaps the other dead man, but that no one else can. Initially he’d thought it was his prosthetic eye, but he’s long since discarded that idea. Now he might finally have an answer.

There, in crabbed old handwriting, the ink fading in spots, is an entry about the nature of The Goddess of Death. Hela. Their sister.

“‘Her touch brings death to the living,’” Loki reads aloud. “‘Those who have known her touch and survived are few, but this they all have in common. That their injured flesh has forgotten what it is to be alive, and that part of them will dwell in death forevermore.’”

“Don’t you see?” Thor says. “My _eye_. Not the fake one. The _missing_ one.”

“Your eye is...what? Dwelling in death?”

“ _Yes_. It makes sense, doesn’t it? I never saw any spirits before, and now suddenly I can, and what has changed?”

“Huh.” Loki reads a bit further, then looks up at Thor, considering. “It’s a pretty good hypothesis, actually.”

Thor is so pleased he could practically sing. He loves it when things _make sense_.

*

Thor supposes it shouldn’t be a shock, but it is. Life has a way of going on and part of life is death and Thor of all people knows this. But it’s still a punch in the gut.

The screaming. The blood.

Thor flies in with Stormbreaker and beheads the bilgesnipe that’s rampaging through their settlement, but he’s too late to save everyone. There are two dead, one trampled and one gored through the neck.

Thor is so distraught afterwards that he takes himself far into the woods, away from everyone, and destroys everything in a three hundred foot radius. He channels the lightning until every nerve end in his body is singing with it. He doesn’t stop until he’s so spent that his control starts slipping, and he sinks to the ground on a long exhale. Loki finds him sprawled in a pile of smoking, splintered tree trunks and blasted rocky rubble, the smell of ozone and newly created fulgurite hanging heavy in the air.

“I’m the worst King we’ve ever had,” Thor says dully. “How long until I’ve killed us all?”

“You haven’t killed anyone except for a bilgesnipe,” Loki tries to point out, but Thor is feeling anguished and angry and unreasonable.

“Only five hundred of us and I can’t even protect that many. I should step down and spare everyone the grief.”

“And who would lead them then?”

“Anyone. Anyone would do a better job than I have.” He’s quiet for a beat. “I would gladly have died in their stead, but for some reason I’m never allowed to.”

Thor isn’t talking only about the people who died today. In his mind he sees Loki die before his eyes three times, three times that Thor would have switched places with him in an instant if only he’d been able to.

“That’s exactly why you can’t,” Loki says. “Who else is willing to risk everything?”

“‘Because that’s what heroes do,’” Thor says, mocking his own words. “If—if I did die—do you think I would join you?”

“No,” Loki says. “Valhalla would welcome you with open arms.”

“It should have welcomed you.”

“Look at me.”

Thor looks down at his cracked knuckles, caked with dirt and blood, then up at Loki’s pale face.

“If you die on purpose I’ll never forgive you,” Loki says, his voice unsteady. “Do you hear me? You can’t. Promise me.”

Their eyes lock and Thor realizes that he can’t make that promise. It scares him a little, but not as much as it should, and that scares him more.

*

“Mother.”

Frigga holds her arms out wide and Thor sags to his knees and buries his face in her skirt and she strokes his hair.

“I can touch you,” Thor says when he can finally speak. “Why can I touch you?”

Frigga tips his chin up with one finger and smooths her thumb over his brow, then draws him to his feet.

“Come,” she says.

They’re walking through her gardens at the palace in Asgard. Flowers from every realm grow in a riot of color and scent, tangled together, twining over and around each other in a chaotic jumble. Frigga had had more manicured formal gardens, but this wild one was her private escape from the rigidity of keeping up royal appearances. Few people had ever been allowed to come here. Thor. Loki. Odin, but only sometimes. Frigga’s maid.

“Oh I do miss this place,” Frigga says, trailing a hand fondly over a gigantic purple bloom.

“Mother—”

“Our time is short, I know. Sit with me.”

She draws him to a stone bench tucked inside a rose bower.

“You’ve been so strong, my son,” she says. She takes his big rough hands in her small soft ones. Thor kisses her hands and she smiles at him. “But it’s not time to give up yet.”

“Loki—”

But Frigga seems determined not to let him finish a single thought, or perhaps she already knows what he’s going to say.

“Your brother,” she says, and her smile is tinged with sadness, “...he’s not here.” She looks around the gardens, then back at Thor, and squeezes his hands tighter. “But he’s not there either.”

“He’s in between.”

“Yes.”

“Why? Why is he stuck? Why do I dream of you and him and father? Why can’t I be with all of you? Why—” But Thor’s throat closes and he can say no more.

“The dreams are all you, my darling. I believe I passed on a bit of that gift to you, and I don’t know if it’s a blessing or a curse, but there it is.”

“And—”

She squeezes his hands again, cutting him off.

“The Norns,” she says, very deliberately, pronouncing each word like it’s something important, “are weavers of unparalleled skill. But even they lose track of a thread every once in awhile.” Her grip tightens even further, painfully so. “Thor. I do love you so. Tell your brother I love him very much too.”

“Mother.”

But Thor is awake now and morning birdsong is filtering in through the window and Frigga is gone.

*

“I’ll prove it to you.”

“Thor, what—” Val starts.

“You’ve told Sif about it, right?”

Thor has showed up for their morning debriefing agitated. Val and Sif are drinking steaming mugs of _kava_ and going over reports, and Sif puts down the paper she’s holding to give them both a cautious look.

“...yes?” Sif says carefully. “If you’re talking about what I think you’re talking about.”

“Loki.” Thor’s voice is rough.

Sif sets drink and paper both down. Her look of pitying concern makes Thor want to throw something.

“I still don’t see why we have to do this,” Loki says. He has his arms crossed tightly across his chest and he’s frowning. “It doesn’t matter.”

“It matters to me,” Thor says to him, out loud, for the women to hear. Before they can do anything else, open their mouths or give each other those infuriating looks or _anything_ , Thor says, “Val, you go over there. Far over there. Far enough that we can’t hear you. Then say something and come back.”

Val sighs and gives him a hard look. They’re at a table under an awning attached to hers and Sif’s house. She gets up and walks across the dew-wet grass, leaving dark green footprints behind her. Loki rolls his eyes at Thor and follows her.

When they come back, Loki is smirking a little bit.

“She said that you have nice tits for a man.”

Thor’s mouth falls open in shock and Loki starts laughing.

“I’m kidding. She recited the Valkyrie’s Code and then said, ‘Loki, you little shit, if you _are_ here you’re lucky I can’t kick your ass.’ She put the emphasis on ‘are’ just like that.”

Thor relays it, and Sif looks to Val for confirmation, and Val puts her hands on her hips.

“Ok, yeah, that’s what I said.”

“Do you want to try it again?”

They do, four or five more times, Val and Sif separately and together. They say things out loud and they write notes and by the end of it Val is rubbing her temples and Sif still just looks confused more than anything else and Loki is starting to look irritated.

“This is getting boring,” Loki complains.

“Ok, ok, ok,” Val says. “Obviously...there’s something going on here. But all this proves is that there’s _something_ that you can see and we can’t, but it doesn’t prove that it’s your brother.”

Loki leans into Thor’s ear. “Tell the Valkyrie that when she put me in chains on Sakaar that I chose to stay in them. And that I liked it. Also tell her that I saw what she kept in her bedstand and that I’m very impressed.”

Thor gives Loki a look, but he tells her and she purses her lips tightly. “That doesn’t prove anything,” Val says.

“And tell Sif…” Loki looks over at Sif and his eyes soften a little. “Tell her that I never told anyone. Not even you. And that I’m sorry.”

Sif scoffs a little when Thor relays the message. “Now I _know_ it’s not Loki, because he’s never apologized to me in his life.”

Loki _tsks_ softly, then leans into Thor’s ear again and spills Sif’s centuries-old secret in just enough detail to make Thor’s ears blush. Thor pulls her aside by the elbow and whispers it into her ear, because such things shouldn’t be said matter-of-factly out loud. Her eyes grow wide and she looks at Thor, slightly panicky, but Thor puts his hand on her shoulder and pulls her into a hug.

“It doesn’t change anything,” he tells her.

They turn back to Val and Sif rubs at her eyes for a moment before speaking. “It has to be Loki,” she says. “No one else could know what Thor just told me.”

Val looks from Sif to Thor and back again, and finally her shoulders slump in acquiescence.

“So what does this mean?” Val asks.

*

Thor makes space for Loki on the bed and Loki lies down next to him. Loki looks nearly normal in the daylight, but moonlight always highlights the otherworldliness of his form.

“I saw mother,” Thor says.

Loki sucks in a breath.

“She said to tell you that she loves you very much.”

Loki squeezes his eyes closed. “Does she know about—us—”

“I don’t know,” Thor says truthfully. “I think she’d just be happy we weren’t fighting anymore.”

One side of Loki’s mouth quirks up. “I guess she would be, at that. If you see her again, can you tell her...that I didn’t mean what I said.”

Thor’s voice is soft, quiet. “Alright.” He doesn’t pry. He waits a moment until Loki looks less on the verge of tears and then says, “She said something about the Norns. I think it might be important.”

“To the library tomorrow, then?”

“Yeah. Hey. Thank you. For earlier.” 

Loki smiles thinly. 

“Can you…” Thor trails off. Loki turns to look at him, one brow raised, and he’s so lovely in the moonlight that Thor is positively heartsick. “Nevermind.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *[fulgurite](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fulgurite) is a rock created when lightning discharges into the ground and it has a really cool internal structure


	8. Chapter 8

Standing in front of Freyja and Freyr’s high seats is quickly becoming one of Thor’s least favorite places to be. Obeying summonses like he’s a youth and not a King, standing below them, forced to accept chastisement or beg for scraps—it all fills him with impotent anger. But what other choice does he have? So he swallows it all down, a hot rock in his belly, and tries for the most reasonable tone he can.

“The bilgesnipe was a mortal threat,” Thor says. “It was destroying buildings and people alike. It killed two of us. It needed to be dealt with immediately. So I dealt with it.”

“We’re not unsympathetic,” Freyr says. It is always Freyr who delivers the poison. “Truly we aren’t. But ring-tailed bilgesnipes are not only endangered here, they’re also sacred to several of our tribes. On top of everything else, there is more than one call to banish you and your people completely. Perhaps you can tell us why we shouldn’t do that.”

Thor clenches his jaw so hard that his fingertips spark. He wants nothing more than to do what Loki had said to him on Sakaar, let it all burn, tell the Vanir exactly what he thinks of their hospitality and take his people and go.

But he has nowhere to take them.

“Breathe,” Loki says. “Listen to me, and breathe.”

With Loki feeding him silvertongued lines Thor manages to talk his way through it and out of banishment. But when he’s finally allowed to leave the hot rock in his belly is still smoldering and he knows that their time here cannot last.

*

When Thor gets back, he finds Val in the square lecturing a red-faced Erik.

He also finds, hiding behind a corner and peeking out at them, the other dead man.

“Hey,” Thor says, and makes eye contact, and the man recoils as if struck and turns to run. “Hey, no wait! Stop! I just want to talk to you!”

The man is running in between two houses and Loki steps into his way. He falls back in surprise, and whirls again, but Thor is already upon him.

“You can see me,” the man says, wide-eyed.

“I can,” Thor says. “I can hear you too.”

“I—what—you—”

“I’m dead too,” Loki says helpfully, smirking, and the man gapes at him.

“We’d like to talk to you,” Thor says.

The man looks back and forth at them, eyes darting, then snaps his mouth shut and drops to one knee. He bows his head and puts his hand over his heart. “Yes, my King.”

*

His name is Arnulf and he was an Einherjar in Hogun’s unit and he died fighting Hela.

*

He is Erik’s father.

*

“I wonder,” Loki says as they walk back to their house, “if those of us that stick around just really didn’t want to go.” The late afternoon sun is slanting in through the trees and it passes through Loki completely; his brother’s lack of shadow is one of the most disconcerting things to Thor, for some reason. He almost appears to flicker for an instant, and Thor blinks, but it’s nothing. Probably a passing cloud.

“I hardly think most people want to go,” Thor points out, kicking at a rock in the path.

Loki tuts. “It’s more than that...it’s…” He pauses to marshal his thoughts and Thor looks over and gives him his full attention. “My desire not to die wasn’t for myself,” he says finally. 

Thor remembers Loki’s ashy face gasping out _”I didn’t do it for him,”_ remembers his brother's body kicking and swinging in Thanos's grasp, and his chest hurts. 

“Maybe Arnulf didn’t move on because he wanted so desperately to stay for his son,” Loki continues.

“And you?” Thor says, trying to push it. He still likes hearing sentimental words from Loki even if he has to pry them out sometimes.

Loki makes a face at him.

“I’ve already told you. Don’t make me say it again.”

“Can’t blame me for trying.”

“I’d stab you right now if I could.”

Thor smiles fondly. “I know.”

*

 _The Benatar_ touches down in their field and Thor is there with his Starkphone camera. He captures the bay doors opening, Tree striding down the ramp with Rocket on his shoulder, the moment both of their faces turn into smiles, a blur of motion as Rocket leaps to the ground.

“Thunder Boy!” Rocket says, offering his fist.

“Rabbit!” Thor smiles, bumping it back.

“I am Groot,” Tree says, and Thor claps him on the shoulder so hard he staggers.

Quill salutes Thor from the bridge, and then the ship is lifting back off. When their visit is done,  
Thor will return Rocket and Tree to the ship with the Bifrost, but now—

“Come, my friends. Let me show you some Asgardian hospitality.”

*

They stay up well into the night, talking and drinking around a fire. Val and Sif are sharing a bottle of firewhiskey, Rocket and Thor a flask of something purple and pungent smelling that Eitri brewed.

“He ain’t old enough to drink yet,” Rocket had said, winking in Tree’s direction, and Thor had smiled and produced some mead for him anyway. He knows that Tree’s kind don’t really need to eat or drink in the traditional sense, but honey generally goes down well for almost any species in the universe.

Loki is there too, sitting on the log next to Thor, but his eyes are sad and he doesn’t smile or say much. Thor thinks he might know why, but he asks anyway. He’s learned that it’s better to know than to assume where his brother is concerned.

“I’m in this world but I’m not part of it,” Loki says, staring into the flames. “I can’t interact. No one else knows I’m here. I feel mad, and alone, and…”

“You’re not alone.”

Loki looks at him with a tight-lipped not-smile and then rises to go stand next to the fire. Thor reaches for him but pulls his hand back.

“What the hell?” Rocket says from across the fire.

“You get used to it,” Val says, gesturing with her drink. Sif plucks it from her hand and takes a swig.

“I mean, I knew what Thor _said_ , but I didn’t really _believe_...are you sure he ain’t nuts?”

“Oh he’s nuts,” Val says. “Just not about this.”

Thor grimaces at all of them. “I’m right here, you know.”

“I am Groot.”

“Thank you. At least someone is on my side.”

Thor goes to say something to Loki again, but when he turns his head Loki appears to flicker. Again. And the words die in his throat. It could be the firelight. It could be his eye. It could be the drink, or his imagination, or just paranoia. It could be anything.

It doesn’t stop the disquiet from settling around his heart like a net.

*

Several days later Rocket mentions that he and Tree had traveled to Vanaheim from the floating city-state of Vespia.

“Floating?” Thor asks, with some interest. “How?”

“Yeah floating, some combination of, like, tech and magic. But I dunno the specifics.”

The tiny seed of an idea plants itself in Thor’s mind.

*

“I need to go back to Nidavellir,” Eitri tells Thor.

Thor is a bit surprised, and the surprise quickly gives way to disappointment.

“I’m sorry for taking you from your home,” Thor apologizes, “I thought—”

Eitri waves him off. “Oh, no no no. I just need to get some things. The forge here is fine for most things, but I have materials and equipment back there that I just can’t get here.”

“Ah,” Thor says, relieved. “What do you need to make, my friend?”

“I need some metal that can channel magic...I know I have some uru and some adamantine...vibranium would be best, but you can hardly find good vibranium anywhere anymore…”

Eitri continues rambling for a little bit and Thor nods along, but something is tickling at the back of his brain.

The tiny seed begins to grow roots.

*

Before Thor takes Rocket and Tree back to their ship he takes a selfie, Rocket perched on his shoulder and Tree making a V with his fingers. Thor makes a copy of it with a bubble heart filter and ridiculous sunglasses on all three of them and resolves to show it to Stark next time he sees him.

*

The library is quiet today. Dust motes dance in the sun beams, and the warm golden silence is broken only by the occasional cough, the scratching of pens, and the click of the terminals. Thor and Loki are sitting in a private reading nook in one of the uppermost spirals and Thor is getting frustrated.

“I know you’re holding out on me,” Thor says, scrubbing his hand over his beard. “But what I don’t know is why.”

“I’m not holding out on you,” Loki says a bit peevishly.

“Yes you are. I know you’re a better researcher than this. I know you _know_ more than this.”

Loki clenches his jaw. Crosses his arms and looks away.

“Thor, please.”

Thor just waits in silence. Not responding at all is usually the best way to get something out of Loki. Loki looks back at him and Thor just raises his eyebrows and shakes his head a little. _Well?_

Loki turns away again.

“I should go,” Loki says, his stare a million miles away. “I let you draw me into this folly because...because I…” A deep breath. “I let you draw me into this folly, but that’s all this is.”

Thor’s stomach lurches, but he’s too annoyed today to break down. “It’s not folly. I told you what mother said. She said that the Norns lose track of a thread sometimes.”

“Yes, so you’ve said, repeatedly.”

“So they’ve lost track of _you_ and we need to find you.”

“Stop.”

“Even if you can’t...be alive again,” and Thor has to force those words out, “what happens next? Do you exist in this state forever? Never finding Valhalla? What about when I die? Will I join you? I probably won’t, and then you’ll be alone again. For good.”

“I’m already alone.”

Thor growls wordlessly and slams his book shut. “No you’re not and I wish you’d stop saying it.”

Loki stands in a rush, pushing off the table and slashing his arm down in a gesture of denial. “I _am_. And have you been paying no attention at all to any of the information we _have_ managed to uncover about the Norns and how they work? There is always a _price_ and it is _never worth it_. Especially not for _me_.”

“Don’t you want to be with me?” Thor asks, pushing.

“Of course I do!” Loki yells, nostrils flaring, and if anyone else could hear him his voice would echo from the rafters. “It’s what I want more than anything! But it can’t happen! I made my bed and now I have to lie in it and I wish you would just let me _rest!_ ”

They glare at each other for a moment, and Thor feels his anger start to ebb away. A deep melancholy ache is left in its wake.

“Brother,” Thor says. “I think you might be…”

“What? I might be what?”

“...fraying.”

Loki recoils slightly, then his face pinches into a frown. “What do you mean?”

“Flickering. You’ve been. Flickering.” Thor wiggles his fingers in the air. “The first time I thought it was nothing and the second time I _told_ myself it was nothing, but the third and fourth and fifth times…”

Loki collapses back onto his chair. “Shit.”

“Yeah.”

“Are you sure?”

Thor nods. He slides his foot over to occupy the same space as Loki’s foot and lets his hand pass through Loki’s knee to rest on the chair underneath him.

“I want you back at my side so strongly that I could die of it,” Thor says, his voice low. “But if that can’t happen then I want at least to see you again in Valhalla. Please. Help me. Don’t hold out on me.”

Loki’s eyes are the bright green of mossy rocks when he finally meets Thor’s gaze several moments later. He sighs.

“We need to go to Earth.”


	9. Chapter 9

This is what they’ve been able to piece together:

First, that Loki is dead. The first truth and the hardest to swallow.

Second, that his soul is wandering, his thread in the Norns’ tapestry lost and beginning to fray.

Third, that journeying to the realms of the dead is not only dangerous and nearly impossible, but probably also useless in light of point two. Loki is not in the realms of the dead.

Fourth, that the only available avenue at this point seems to be talking to the Norns themselves.

Fifth, that it will be costly, though the cost cannot be known until it is laid upon them.

(Sixth, that Thor would pay any price.)

(Seventh, that Loki won’t let him.)

*

They’ve only been able to find a scarce handful of accounts of people who successfully found the Norns and then returned to write about it. All of the accounts are cagey about how the authors managed to get to the Well of Fate in the first place. All of the accounts agree that the paths to get there are individualized and not of this world and harrowing beyond measure.

In other words, there is nothing to do in preparation.

It is a relief, in a way.

Leaping into action and danger has always been something that Thor is good at.

*

“What I’m guessing,” Loki says as Thor throws things into a pack. “Is that we need to travel to Yggdrasil.” He’s pacing, worrying at one hand with the other.

“Yggdrasil is just a concept,” Thor says, sniffing a pair of breeches before shoving them into the bag. “It’s not a place.”

“Not on this plane, no. This is not the only plane of reality.”

“I...huh.” An armful of dried food disappears into the bag, and two waterskins, and Thor jiggles the bag around to settle everything.

“I hardly think you’ll need food there,” Loki frets. “Or clothing for that matter. I don’t like this. I don’t like this at all.”

“Never hurts to be prepared,” Thor grunts, hefting the bag experimentally to test its weight. “So why do we need to go to Earth?”

“That…’sorcerer.’” Loki makes a moue of distaste, like conceding the word disgusts him.

“The one in New York?”

“Yes. He’s clearly a planewalker.”

“You don’t like him though.”

“Neither do you. But I think that if you trade in some of your savior-of-the-universe goodwill that he can probably get us where we need to go.”

“Ever the utilitarian.” Thor slips his Starkphone into his pocket and pats it to make sure it’s secure.

“Well, do you have any better ideas?” Loki snaps, his nerves making his temper flare. It’s at that precise moment that he flickers again. More than flickers. He blinks entirely out of existence. Thor’s heart stops. Loki has never disappeared completely before. The two seconds that it takes Loki to reappear feel like they last two years, and when he does flicker back into sight, Thor’s heart leaps painfully in his chest and time snaps back to double speed before settling and he’s dizzy.

“What happened?” Loki says. He looks dazed.

“We have to go _now_.”

*

Though he’d rather be on Earth that very instant, there is something Thor must do before they go. He takes a folded sheet of paper from his desk and goes to find Erik.

There is no way he can explain the truth of the situation to the lad, but the white lie rolls easily off his tongue.

“Valkyrie found this,” Thor tells Erik, “tucked inside some of the armor that made it off Asgard. The armor was your father's.”

Erik takes the paper with trembling hands, and Thor turns away while he reads it. It's everything that Arnulf wanted to tell his son and never could, transcribed by Thor at the end of their conversation the other day with the promise he would deliver it. If things go poorly on Earth this will be the only chance Thor has to keep his promise, so he ignores the panicked cry of his heart to stay these last few minutes.

“Thank you, your majesty,” Erik sniffles, clutching the paper to his chest. “Thank you. I can never thank you enough…here, I want you to to have this.”

He pulls the necklace he's wearing over his head and thrusts it at Thor.

“It was my father's,” Erik says. “His lucky coin. I put it on a string.”

“I couldn't possibly--”

“ _Please_ ,” Erik says. “I want you to have it. He…he loved serving Asgard and he would want you to have it too. And I can't possibly repay you for what you've given me today, this is the only thing I have that means anything, please.”

It would be graceless to refuse, so Thor takes the necklace, a worn metal disk on a leather cord, and pulls it over his own head and he clasps Erik's forearm and pounds him on the back.

“You're a good lad,” Thor says. “If your father were here I know he'd be proud.”

*

And then a last stop, to tell Val and Sif that he’ll be gone for an indeterminate amount of time and wrap them both in too-tight hugs.

“If I don't come back…” Thor says.

“Don’t die,” Val says, the same thing she said to him on Asgard before he went to confront Hela, and he smiles thinly.

“It isn’t part of my plan.”

Before either Val or Sif can open their mouths to respond he and Loki are already on Earth.

*

The Bifrost drops them in the middle of Strange’s empty sitting room.

“STRANGE!” Thor roars. “I know you can hear me!”

There is a muffled rustling sound, a whoosh of displaced air.

“STRAN—” But then there is a yard of red fabric trying to stuff itself into Thor’s mouth, and more wrapping itself around him, pinning his arms to his sides, pinning his legs together, and he fights not to fall over. Loki is laughing at him. Thor glares.

When Strange appears from thin air (and really, Thor wonders if the man even knows _how_ to walk), Thor glares at him too.

“Thor,” Strange says in that maddeningly calm voice he has. Then he cocks his head. “And...someone else?” He beckons to his cloak with two fingers and it unwinds itself from around Thor’s body and flies over to settle around Strange’s shoulders. “You do know you have a strange energy signature hovering around you, right? Is that why you’re here?”

“Yes,” Thor says, chafing at his arms to get the blood flowing again. “It is.”

“You know I don’t like it when Asgardians come to Earth,” Strange says. “Bad things tend to follow. Let’s get this done quickly.”

“It’s my brother,” Thor says plainly. “The energy you’re feeling. It’s Loki.”

Strange frowns. “I thought your brother was dead. Has he cursed you? His magic shouldn’t be able to persist like this—”

“No,” Thor says. “It’s not his magic. It’s _him_. His...spirit. His soul. Whatever you want to call it.”

“...I see.”

Suddenly they’re both seated, a table in between them, and Strange leans forward to rest his chin on his steepled hands.

“I wish you wouldn’t do that,” Thor growls.

“I’d stab him for you if I could,” Loki offers. “You know I’d love to.”

Strange ignores Thor’s comment. “So, Loki. Do you need me to banish him? I mean, a priest might be a better bet—”

“NO,” Thor says sharply, then more gently, “no. I need your help though. Spirits are not meant to linger and I fear that his may become lost entirely if I don’t help him. I need you to send me somewhere that I can do that.”

Strange nods at Stormbreaker. “Can’t your axe take you anywhere you need to go?”

“The Bifrost can only carry me to places in this universe. It cannot take me to places outside the universe.”

“I see. And you think I can?”

“I know he can,” Loki says from Thor’s side. “That ring he’s wearing.”

“I know you can,” Thor echoes. “That ring you’re wearing.”

“Oh, very good,” Strange says. “So, tell me. Why should I help with anything having to do with Loki?”

“No matter what my brother may have done in the past, I love him dearly, and I would not see his soul lost for eternity.”

“And where is it you would have me send you?”

“Yggdrasil. The World Tree.”

Strange lets out a long sigh and sits back in his chair.

“That is...the worst possible place I can think of to send anybody,” Strange says. “Do you know how dangerous it is?”

“I do.”

“And you would still ask me to send you there?”

“I would.”

“Is Loki really worth this much to you?”

“He’s worth more than that.”

“You’re not going to try to bring him back, are you?” Strange says. “Because that’s just—”

“No,” Thor lies. “I only want to help him move on to the proper realms of the dead.”

The look Strange levels at him is hard, his mouth tight.

“You probably won’t make it back,” Strange says finally.

“Then I will have died trying,” Thor says. “I can’t sit here and do nothing. Please, if you bear me any goodwill at all—” He can’t keep the desperation out of his voice.

Strange rises and holds out his hand to shake. “You’re a crazy asshole, you know that?”

Thor takes it and sighs in relief. “It’s my finest quality.”

*

It takes Strange a few moments to find the right book, then a few more to find the right passage, and Thor fidgets impatiently.

“He’s like a child,” Loki complains. “Doesn’t even have the books in his own library memorized? Needs playthings to cast spells?”

“He’s only mortal,” Thor murmurs. “He’s doing the best he can. And he’s helping us.”

Loki sighs.

“This is madness,” Loki says. “You’ve always been mad, but this is…”

“Hey,” Thor says. He brings his hand to Loki’s cheek, and Loki leans into it, a bloom of warmth. As much to comfort himself as to comfort Loki, he says, “We’ll do this together. You and me, side by side like we always should have been.”

Loki’s eyes search his face, and he looks so earnest and frightened that it sends a nervous twist into Thor’s belly. “I love you,” Loki whispers.

Strange snaps his book shut and they both jump. 

“Ready?”

With an effort, Thor turns away from Loki and focuses on Strange. He can still feel warmth on his hand and arm where Loki is standing up close against him.

“As I’ll ever be.”

*

This is what Thor can piece together when he comes to:

First, that the world feels strange and askew, the sun too bright, his body awkward and ungainly.

Second, that a vast swampy plain stretches before him, a noxious maze of sucking, bubbling mud, and beyond it the dark smudge of mountains on the horizon.

Third, that he has nothing but the clothes on his back.

Fourth, that he is alone.

Fifth, that he wasn't ready at all.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'M VIBRATING WITH EXCITEMENT I HOPE YOU LIKE THIS ONE

Thor doesn’t know how long he’s been walking. Lacking any other landmarks, he’d set off towards the mountains, and though he could have been walking for hours or days, the angle of his shadow has never budged. The sun has never moved. It remains a painful fiery eye that burns so brightly it casts the whole sky in orange.

And still Thor struggles along.

The mud is foul and thick and clinging. It bubbles and stinks. Every step has to be judged precisely; one wrong-footed move and Thor is up to his knees and sinking rapidly and it takes him long moments to free himself.

If he had Stormbreaker he could fly up into the air and be at the mountains in no time at all.

But he doesn’t, so he picks his way through the swamp like an ant.

He’d call clouds if he could, to cover the hateful sun, but there is nothing in the sky here to respond to his call. It’s like yelling into a void. He feels blind and dumb. He can’t even produce a spark.

And still Thor struggles along.

He feels saturated in mud. It works its way into every crack and crevice in his clothing, every pore of his skin. His hair is mud. His lungs are mud. His soul is mud.

The mountains grow no closer.

And still Thor struggles along.

He begins to hurt. The repetitive motion of joints in their sockets begins to wear them down, whittling the cartilage and bone and eroding it away. He’s been walking for so long. How long? He can no longer recall what the normal passage of time feels like. He’s not the God of Thunder. He’s the God of Walking. The God of Mud.

He begins to cough. Every step is an agony. He stops, finally. He turns around and looks backwards.

There is nothing to indicate he’s moved at all.

Thor would walk forever if it meant it would get him where he needed to go, but somewhere in his baked, mud-muddled mind he realizes that continuing to struggle along will get him nowhere.

He sinks to his knees. His chin falls to his chest. For a breath or two he contemplates just staying right here. He’s so tired.

But no. Collapsing here won’t get him where he needs to go either.

Painfully, Thor forces himself back to his feet. He can’t go backward. Forward doesn’t seem to exist. He can’t fly up.

So he’ll go down.

He takes one squelching step into the deep mud and sinks up to his knee. Drags the other leg forward and sinks up to his thighs. Throws his arms forward, like he’s swimming, and the mud swallows him to his chest. Tries to throw his weight forward again and the the mud climbs up and up, past his neck, past his ears, and he tips his head back, but then it’s closing over his face and into his eyes and he opens his mouth to scream but it goes down his throat and he’s becoming the mud and he’s dying, he’s dying, he’s dying—

*

Thor is prone on the ground, his cheek pressed into the gravelly dirt. The swamp is gone. The sun is gone. His mind is clear. He nearly kisses the ground in relief.

Staggering to his feet, he takes stock of his new situation. The sky is no sky at all, but the blackness of space, and there are so many stars that it looks crusted in diamonds. The wispy pink arms of a nebula wind through them. A packed dirt and gravel path slopes under his feet, hugging the outside of a strangely cracked and pitted wall in a gentle spiral. The pathway is as wide as he is tall, and ends abruptly. When he peers over the edge there is nothing but abyss. He has the vague sense of being surrounded, that there are massive objects hanging over and around him, but that he can’t see, and when he closes his eyes he can almost _feel_ them all swaying gently, can hear the phantom rustle of leaves.

Thor realizes that the cracked and pitted wall is bark and that he is somewhere on Yggdrasil’s trunk.

A choice lies before him; should he go up or should he go down?

Stories say that the Well of Fate lies at Yggdrasil’s roots. Thor has no illusions that physical direction means anything in this place, but ‘down’ worked for him last time and so he chooses it again.

*

It’s just as well that Thor’s pack of supplies didn’t come through with him, because he feels no hunger or thirst—nor actually a need to attend to _any_ functions of his body.

He does, however, wish that Loki was with him. He had hoped to do this together. Some part of him had suspected he might have to do this alone, though, and he accepts it with grim determination. He thinks that Loki must have suspected too, if his scared expression and words of love had been any indication. Was Loki still waiting in Strange’s sitting room? Was he here doing his own quest?

Has he flickered out of existence already?

Thor’s boots crunch in the gravel as he moves down the path. It’s the only sound he can hear.

Gradually, he becomes aware of a murmuring.

It sounds like it’s coming from _inside_ the tree.

Thor stops and presses his ear up against the bark, but he can’t make out any words. Just as he’s pulling back, something catches his eye—a tiny crack, indistinguishable from any other crack in the bark, except that a thin sliver of light is visible through it. Thor gets his eye as close to it as he can and peers in.

It’s his old room in Asgard.

Startled, he pulls back. When he presses his face to the crack again, his room is gone.

Disconcerted, Thor continues downward.

The murmuring is louder now, and there are more cracks. Wider cracks. Each one is a window through which he can see shadowy movement. They fill him with unease, and he has no wish to explore them.

He hears his name called loudly from one of them. He quickens his steps.

He hears a woman’s voice raised in a moan of pleasure from another. He ignores that one as well.

The sounds of battle.

Strains of music.

Endearments.

He goes faster and faster, starting to run now. The window cracks fly by in a blur.

“Brother.”

Thor skids to a halt.

This crack is wider than the others, wide enough for Thor to fit his face through it should he wish to do so. The light spilling from it is honey-warm, inviting.

Cautiously, Thor looks through.

He sees Asgard, the Realm Eternal, whole and shining and perfect. The palace gleams in the sun, every spire and turret winking gold, the sky a perfect fathomless blue. And there, in all its glory, the rainbow bridge, a stripe of shimmering iridescence carrying the life’s blood of the realm, her lifeline to the cosmos. The ache of nostalgia fills Thor’s chest so intensely that he can scarcely breathe. It’s a home that he’ll never see again. And its destruction was his own fault.

There is a crowd gathered, a veritable sea of upturned faces, and before them is a raised platform covered in flowers and flanked by two rows of Einherjar, Heimdall and the Warriors Three at their head. Upon the platform is a throne of gold. His father is there, and his mother as well, both in splendid robes and ornate ceremonial armor. They turn to Thor and smile. Thor’s heart is in a vice, being crushed slowly.

Standing next to the throne, one hand laid possessively on it, is Loki.

He looks as he did before he fell, beautiful, fresh-faced, his eyes unclouded by worry or madness or grief. His short hair curls just under his ears and his eyes crinkle at the corners when he sees Thor. He is agonizing in his loveliness.

“Brother,” Loki says again, and beckons. “Come. It’s your coronation day. We’ve been waiting for you.”

Thor stands transfixed and feels tears prick his eyes. The window before him is growing wider, taller. A breeze caresses his face, ripe with the scent of jasmine and honeysuckle. The crowd is murmuring his name.

“Come,” Loki says. His voice is sweet and silver-bright.

It’s everything Thor has ever wanted. His home. His people. His friends. His family. His birthright. His brother, by his side. His entire being yearns for this to be true, though he knows that it isn’t.

 _And so what if it’s not?_ a voice inside of him says. _Does it matter, when reality is so barren? Wouldn’t it be better to seize a chance at happiness?_

Before Thor realizes what he’s doing he has both hands at the edges of the crack. It’s so large now that he could step through it.

“Loki,” he croaks.

“What are you waiting for?” Loki smiles, beckoning him again. “We’re all so happy for you. Come take your place.”

“You’re not real,” Thor says, low and harsh.

“I’m as real as you are,” Loki says. His smile is heartstopping. “Darling. Come give us a kiss.”

It would be easy, so easy, to just take a step. Just one step. To leave behind this life of ash and ceaseless struggle and loss upon loss, to join his loved ones and rest and just...be happy…

One of his feet moves forward, a shuffling slide, and with an effort of will dredged up from somewhere so deep inside of him that he feels his insides tear, Thor stops.

Loki’s smile falters and he frowns slightly. “Is something the matter, brother?”

Thor looks helplessly upon him. This beautiful young face before him is Loki, but it isn’t the Loki that Thor knows anymore. Thor’s Loki is marked by pain, winnowed and hallowed by trials of fire and ice and despair, stripped to his essence by sacrifice. Thor’s Loki is lost, and Thor’s Loki needs him.

With a rough cry and a belly full of sick self-loathing, Thor tears himself away from the crack. He’s disgusted at himself for even considering this. He turns his back and squeezes his eyes shut and sinks to the ground, wrapped around his own knees. He stays there for a long moment, mastering his breathing, slowing the mad thunder of his heart. Saying farewell to his dream.

When he finally stands and dares to look back, no trace of the crack remains.

*

Some time later, Thor realizes that the open expanse of interstellar space has been replaced by something shadowy and dim that somehow gives the impression of huddled tree trunks and thick foliage, and also somehow gives the impression that it is as deep and vast as eternity. Despite the mind-boggling expansiveness, the air feels closer now. Slightly oppressive. Slightly maddening. It begins to creep into Thor’s brain. He feels on edge, restless. His eyes dart around, but there is nothing to see. For no reason at all, a weird high giggle feels locked in his throat.

The path opens up into a round clearing.

There is a figure standing there.

The head is bowed, but Thor knows who it is. He’d know the line of that silhouette anywhere. 

“Loki!”

Thor is elated for a brief moment until he draws closer and starts to take in all the wrong details. The too-long ragged hair. Fingernails like talons, chipped and cracked. The awkward set of the shoulders.

The figure hasn’t moved.

Thor slows.

“Loki?”

Loki looks up, and Thor takes a step back. The eyes. They burn in his face, two pits of green fire, the flames dancing and licking. The mouth opens in a twisted snarl. Instinctively, Thor’s hand goes to his hip for a weapon, but he finds nothing there. He takes another step back.

Loki raises his arms out to the sides, and spectral snakes writhe out from behind his back like the legs of a spider. They snap and hiss and venom drips from their jaws.

“Brother—” Thor starts.

 _I am not your brother_ one of the snakes hisses, and it darts out to strike him. Thor catches the neck in one hand, twists and rips with the other, and drops the still hissing head to the ground. It evaporates into wisps of smoke and then reforms back on its body.

Another test, then. Thor sets his jaw.

Loki throws back his head and laughs. It’s high and mad and it sends chills down Thor’s spine.

“‘Are you sure you wouldn’t rather just punch your way out?’” Loki says, mocking.

He casts his arms forward, and the snakes attack, spewing venom and poison words.

_I have never loved you._

_I will always betray you._

_Everyone is frightened of you._

_Selfish brute._

_You are unloved._

_You are an unworthy son._

_You are the worst._

_You destroy everything you love._

_Better that you should have died too._

They are all Thor’s deepest-buried fears and insecurities, and Thor roars his denial. He catches every snake, twists every head from the body before it can bite him.

Each head reforms itself back on its neck. The snakes dance around Loki, waving and writhing. Loki is floating above the ground now, and his hair is floating too, a parody of the snakes emanating from his body. The flaming pits of his eyes are orange now, not green.

Thor feels the first stab of something like fear.

The snakes attack him again, and again, and Thor fights, and he fights. His world narrows to a tangled confusion of open jaws and diamond-sharp teeth, of ripping and twisting—Loki’s laugh—Thor’s rough-throated denials.

Finally, one of the vipers sinks its teeth into the meat of Thor’s arm.

 _I have never loved you._ The words tear into him, burning along his veins, a trail of fire straight into his heart, and Thor cries out. He falls to the ground, gasping. More teeth sink into him now, more venom coursing into him.

Thor is convulsing in the dirt, his body wracked with seizures he can’t control. Each fear carves its own path into his flesh, into his heart, and Thor knows that he is dying.

No. Not each fear.

Each _lie_.

_I will always betray you._

No, Thor thinks, no. He and Loki may have been at odds for a short while, but _no_. Loki came back to Asgard. Loki gave up his life trying to save Thor from Thanos. Loki’s spirit stayed behind for him when it could have gone on to everlasting glory in Valhalla. _No_.

A portion of the venom burns away and one of the snakes flames into ash before disappearing.

And so it goes. Each one of Loki’s lies makes itself known, and Thor confronts each one. Mindless denial does nothing—he must accept each word, let it flow through him, pierce him in the heart, face it directly, name it for the falsehood that it is. Only then does the viper die, does the venom burn off.

The last one, the hardest one— _Better that you should have died too._

Thor almost can’t defeat this one. This wound runs the deepest. This lie has the most power. Its roots worm into the depths of him, finding purchase in every crack and crevice. He struggles with it, and he can summon forth nothing to deny it, and his body begins failing, and he starts to surrender to despair.

His eyes fall upon the apparition of his brother.

He realizes that this is another lie.

This is not Loki. These lies don’t come from Loki. They come from Thor himself. Everyone calls Loki the God of Lies, but Thor thinks he may be able to give his brother a run for his money.

Thor makes himself think of all the good he’s been able to accomplish. The humans he saved from Malekith. His people that he was able to save from Ragnarok. Striking Thanos dead and breaking the Soul Gem. Resettling his people. The venom still flows through him.

He makes himself think of the people in his life. His human friends, and Rocket and Tree, and Val and Sif. How his death would make them mourn. The venom still flows through him, but weaker now.

He thinks of Loki, the real Loki. How if he dies, that Loki will be lost. How if he had died in the fight with Thanos, that Loki would be lost already.

That maybe, just maybe, his death would not actually solve anything at all.

The venom finally burns away.

With each confronted lie, not-Loki has been sinking lower in the air, his hair less wild, the fire of his eyes dimming, until finally the last snake is gone and his feet touch the ground and he is simply Loki.

Thor lies panting on the ground, spent and soul-weary.

“Brother,” Thor groans, reaching his arm out.

Loki smiles.

He turns into a thousand points of light and drifts away.

Thor weeps.

*

When Thor finally heaves himself to his feet, the scenery has changed again. The wall of the trunk is gone, the nebulous forest is gone, the path is gone. His feet are cradled by springy moss, and strange smooth pillars and knobbly outcroppings erupt from a thick cloying mist to rise into the air before their tops are lost in the haze.

He moves closer to inspect one of the pillars and finds it is no pillar at all, but a blade of grass that towers twenty feet or more over his head. The knobbly outcroppings are roots the size of small buildings. Dimly, he can hear a rushing of water like a great waterfall in the distance.

He moves towards the sound, weaving his way through the grass. The air is so wet that condensation forms on his eyelashes and beard. An enormous dark shape begins to take form before him, sharpening as he gets closer, and the roar of the water grows deafening.

The shape is a woman, made on the same scale as the grass, and she is holding an urn, and from the urn pours a steady stream of water onto the gigantic roots.

She turns at Thor’s approach. She tips the urn back upright and immediate silence falls. She takes one step towards him, then another, and with each step she shrinks, until she stands before him the same height as he is. Then her form seems to multiply, one figure stepping out neatly from either side, and now there are three women before him.

They each speak in turn.

“Welcome, Thor Odinson—”

“To the Well of Fate—”

“We have been waiting for you.”


	11. Chapter 11

“Are you the Norns?” Thor asks.

The question is absurd, but everything that’s happened has been absurd. The swamp, the Tree, the visions. This could be another test. Thor feels like he’s been traveling Yggdrasil for an entire lifetime already; the person he is now is not the same person who Strange sent here. Wearily, he hopes that the tests are over, that now he must only bear the price he’s come to pay.

Whatever that may be.

The women don’t answer him, but they turn as one and beckon him to follow.

Out of the mist rises an ornate stone well, and behind it a long hall, and the cleared space in front has a fire and a deceptively ordinary looking loom with a half finished tapestry on it. The loom is surrounded by baskets upon baskets of thread in every color imaginable, and some that seem to defy imagination; when Thor tries to look closer the colors shift or vibrate or otherwise make his brain hurt, and he has to look away.

“We know why you have come,” one of the women says. “It was written in your pattern ages ago.”

“My brother is lost,” Thor says anyway. “Can you help me find him?”

“We can.”

“Can you bring him back?”

A tutting noise.

“Would you go against our will? Tell us that we have cut our thread wrong, that our pattern is displeasing to your eye?”

“Nothing can be pleasing to my eye with Loki dead, or worse than dead.”

“An arrogant pup you are.”

“I’m prepared to pay your price.”

“Come look,” one of the Norns says, and gestures to the loom. “Come see.” The other two Norns stand by the fire with their hands clasped before them, and this one draws Thor forward. She points to a shining gold thread. “This one is you.” She points to a silver one that runs mostly alongside it, passing over it, twisting around it, occasionally veering off, but always coming back to join the gold. “This one is your brother.” 

To see their lives displayed like this is painful. Their whole long history, every heartache and triumph, every joy and every drop of grief, reduced to two twining threads. From this vantage point it all seems so insignificant.

The silver thread ends suddenly. Thor reaches his hand out to touch it, but gets slapped away.

“There is another who needs help as well,” Thor says. His hand steals to the necklace still hanging at his neck, the one Erik gave him before he left. “Though I do not seek to bring him back, only help him forward.”

The one standing with him nods, and looks at him approvingly.

“Since the ends of their threads are lost,” she says, “we will need something that belonged to each of them to call to them. Help them find their way to us.”

Thor takes the necklace off and hands it to her. “This was Arnulf’s.”

She takes the necklace and it disappears into the sleeve of her robe.

“And something of your brother’s.”

Thor casts his mind desperately around. He has nothing with him that belonged to Loki. Indeed, he doesn’t even think he owns anything at all that belonged to Loki, even back in Asgardia. Asgard destroyed, the Statesman destroyed, Loki’s...body, destroyed.

“I have nothing that he possessed,” Thor says roughly. “Nothing that belonged to him is left. Except...”

She looks at him expectantly.

“Me,” Thor says plainly. “Nothing that belonged to Loki is left except for me.”

The Norn laughs at this. She looks delighted.

“How very fitting,” she says. “We do love a good poetic gesture. Step up to the fire, then.”

She joins the other two women at the fire and they link hands in a circle around it. Thor stands behind them, a nervous pull in his stomach. He has no idea what he’s expected to do. He wonders what Loki would do if he had heard Thor claim that he belonged to him. Laugh, probably. Call him something rude.

It’s true, though. Maybe not literally, but true in the only way that matters.

A low chanting starts up. The Norns’ mouths barely seem to move. The sound comes out from somewhere deep in their throats to shiver out into the air, and the flames flare blue and throw up sparks. Thor shifts from one foot to the other. The chanting is in a language he can’t understand—older than Allspeak then, probably as old as the universe itself for all Thor knows.

The three women raise their arms and the fire begins to swirl and leap higher into the air.

They begin speaking now, three voices as one, as loud and clear as the ringing of bells and slightly dysphonic in a way that makes the hairs on Thor’s arms stand up. Their robes are flowing out behind them, their hair too, and their eyes glow the same blue as the fire.

Arnulf’s necklace rises into the air over the whirling flames and they cry his name out with a shout.

His form takes shape in the fire. His eyes meet Thor’s, and they lock for a brief moment.

The chanting changes now to something less consonant and more melodic, and Arnulf’s shimmering form starts to elongate—stretching—pulling tight into a glowing thread—and with a sharp downward thrust of the Norns’ hands, the thread that was Arnulf flies up into the air before snaking down to weave itself back into the tapestry hanging on the loom.

Thor watches the entire thing with his mouth agape.

“Thor Odinson,” the Norns say in their weird dysphonic three-part voice. “It is your turn.”

Thor snaps his jaw shut and squares himself as they start chanting again.

“What do you need—what should I—the fire—”

“Fear not,” they say. “We don’t need all of you. Only a piece.”

Before Thor can even begin to wonder what that means, he’s screaming.

His left arm is fire. Fire and agony. It burns and it burns and it burns, and horrified, Thor sees his own arm floating in the blue fire. He looks down at himself and sees that he has no arm at all, and he nearly faints. Retching, he falls to his knees, his remaining arm somehow holding him up.

He doesn’t look up until he hears them shout Loki’s name, and then he drags his eyes upward.

Loki is there. In the fire. Floating.

Loki’s eyes fall on Thor and he looks panicked. Thor can see him mouthing “no” over and over again but he can hear nothing over the wall of sound emanating from the Norns’ throats and the roar of the fire.

Thor doesn’t know if this is all going right or if it’s all going terribly, terribly wrong.

Loki’s eyes roll back in his head as the chanting changes. His limbs dangle limply.

“Make your choice, Thor Odinson,” the Norns say. “Your brother is here. Send him on or bring him back.”

Thor is dizzy and half crazed with exhaustion, confused and maimed, his heart cracking. He’s come this far. He’s done so much already. His arm is gone. What’s a little bit more? What else could they ask of him?

“Bring him back,” Thor gasps. “Please.”

Thor is suddenly in the fire now too, but this time it doesn’t hurt. He and Loki hang together in the air, side by side. The flames spin around them, higher and higher. Thor looks out and sees the Norns’ faces in a blur, their eyes still glowing, their hair whipping. The world beyond them has disappeared. They begin to spin too. Everything is spinning, around and around, a cyclone with glowing walls rising high into the air. The baskets of thread are flying around them in a jumble of color. Norns and thread both spool out and become part of the cyclone. A maelstrom.

Loki’s form begins to stretch and twist into a thread and Thor reaches for him, but Thor is stretching and twisting too.

The chanting is a physical thing now, clawing into him, vibrating his very essence.

AND NOW WE NEED THE BREATH OF LIFE. THIS IS THE PRICE.

 _Take mine_.

YOU WOULD GIVE IT ALL UP?

 _I would_.

YOU WILL NOT BE TOGETHER THIS WAY.

They are trying to help him. Why are they trying to help him? Thor can’t think, he can’t think, he’s not a body anymore, not a brain, only a soul with a desperate yearning.

 _Take half_ he bargains. _Half of what I had left is his_.

YOU WILL BE BOUND TOGETHER. YOU WILL LIVE AS ONE AND DIE AS ONE.

An entire long lifetime without Loki, or half a lifetime with him, and a good death afterwards. It is no choice at all.

 _Do it_.

IT IS DONE.

Thor knows no more.

*

*

*

The sun is shining red through Thor’s closed eyelids, and the grass is soft on his back, and the breeze on his face is as gentle as a lover’s caress. He opens his eyes to a blue sky dotted with puffy white clouds.

Feeling a presence at his shoulder, he turns his head to the left.

There, cradled in the grass next to him, his eyes closed and his lips slightly parted, is Loki.

Thor raises his right arm (doesn’t think about the left arm, not yet). His hand trembles. He almost doesn’t want to touch. Doesn’t want to find out. He might break. After everything that’s happened, this might be the end of him, right here.

His fingertips come to rest on Loki’s cheek.

Loki’s very warm, very soft, very _alive_ cheek.

Loki stirs into his touch, and with a glad cry, Thor is rolling on top of him—wrapping his arm around him, pressing him into the grass, burying his weeping face into Loki’s neck.

And Loki is awake now, and he’s clutching Thor back hard enough to drive the breath from his lungs, and he’s crying too, great wet hiccuping sobs, and Thor just holds him and clings until their tears slow and their ragged breaths begin to even.

Loki was dead and now he is not and Thor may never stop touching him for as long as they live.

“I can’t believe you,” Loki says, his voice cracking. Their faces are pressed into each other’s shoulders, and he rubs his cheek against Thor. “That you did that, that you—” His voice chokes off and Thor kisses his hair, kisses his forehead, rubs their noses together.

Gods, he will really never stop touching Loki again, not if he can help it.

“You did too much,” Loki whispers raggedly. “You gave up too much of yourself.”

“No I didn’t. I gave up just the right amount.”

Loki’s face starts to crumple again, and Thor kisses the crinkle between his eyes, and the downturned corners of his mouth, and when Loki’s breath hitches Thor finally—finally—a lifetime’s worth of _finally_ —brushes his lips against his brother’s. They’re soft and sweet and Loki makes a little whimper of a sound back in his throat, and Thor kisses him and kisses him until times stretches out and stops having meaning, and then kisses him some more. And their bodies mold together like this is how they were ever meant to be.

And Thor knows that there are many things he regrets in his life, but that this will never be one of them. He feels nothing but relief and happiness and a great, swelling lightness of his being that he can only call love.

“You said the sun would shine on us again,” Thor smiles, brushing the hair back from Loki’s face and running his thumb over Loki’s kiss-swollen lips, the sunlight warm on both of their faces.

Loki laughs, a little incredulously.

“Have you been holding onto that all this time?”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

“You featherbrain,” Loki says affectionately. His eyes are so soft and open and his smile is so wide and free, and Thor can’t help but kiss him again. “‘The sun’s getting real low,’” Loki says in a mocking imitation of Thor’s voice. “I was trying to tell you that Banner was coming, for all the good it did us.”

Now it’s Thor’s turn to laugh, long and deep, and Loki holds onto him and strokes the back of his head until his hysteria runs out.

Thor has been hanging on the precipice between laughter and tears, and he feels his eyes start to leak again. “Do you know how much I love you?” he asks.

“I think I do,” Loki says quietly. He kisses the top of Thor’s ear and then whispers into it. “I think it’s about as much as I love you.”

Their lips find each other’s again, and when they break apart, Thor rests their foreheads together and gently rubs the tip of his nose back and forth over Loki’s and Loki sighs. In truth Thor would stay here for a week in this field, relearning his brother’s body in this new language now open to them—just the two of them, sharing breath and sweat and tears and love, here under the sun in the grass. But—

“I guess the question right now,” Thor says finally, “is where do you think we are?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thor lost his left arm in the comics, I'm not trying to be gruesome out of nowhere. *_*


	12. Chapter 12

It turns out they’re on Earth, which becomes immediately apparent when Tony Stark and Bruce Banner come spilling out through one of Strange’s portals to stare open-mouthed at the spectacle before them. Thor knows he must look a sight, wrapped around his brother with their faces pressed together, but he feels no shame. He’s done so much to get here that there is simply no room left for such things. So he doesn’t leap to his feet, or roll away from Loki, or do anything other than squeeze him tighter in a silent show of solidarity. And for his part, Loki smiles tight-lipped at Thor in return and lets him, though his expression shuttered itself the moment the Avengers arrived.

Stark recovers first, and he helps Thor to his feet while Banner gestures wildly at Loki.

“What is he—how—isn’t Loki dead??”

“Apparently not,” Loki says drily. He hasn’t moved really, and is still lying on his back in the grass with both hands resting on his own stomach.

It’s this interaction more than anything else that makes Thor’s heart sing. That his friends can see Loki too. Speak with him. Casual proof that Loki isn’t a figment, but an actual physical reality. Thor wants to weep all over again, but instead he smiles and claps Stark on the back and pats Banner’s chest with the back of his hand.

Thor holds his hand out for Loki to take, but his brother doesn’t move.

“Thor,” he says weakly.

In a heartbeat, Thor is kneeling down next to him, looking worriedly into his face.

“I don’t think that I can walk—”

“Help me lift him,” Thor says, since he’s still awkward and unbalanced with one arm and can’t get the proper leverage. Stark and Banner give each other ‘I don’t know what’s going on either’ looks, and then help lift and arrange various limbs until Thor can stand, Loki’s arms looped around Thor’s neck and Thor’s right arm cradling his ass. Loki lets his head fall against Thor’s chest.

A moment ago Thor’s heart had been singing but now it’s sinking. Because _this_ more than anything else is an indication of how weakened Loki is, that he is letting the human Avengers see his weakness and is allowing them to touch and help him.

“Will that take us back to New York?” Thor asks, nodding towards the still-spinning portal.

“Yeah,” Banner says. “Hey, listen—”

But Thor is already stepping into Stark’s tower.

*

Strange is there and he has Thor’s things with him, the pack that didn’t make it through to Yggdrasil and Stormbreaker.

“I didn’t think I’d see you again,” Strange says.

“My brother enjoys defying expectations,” Loki says. “For better or for worse.”

Stark and Banner are clambering through behind them.

“You have my gratitude,” Thor tells Strange. “For helping me get to Yggdrasil and for coming to collect me afterwards. Know that I owe you a debt. But now I must return to Asgardia and take care of my brother.”

“We have doctors here,” Stark says. “Good ones—”

“Thank you,” Thor says. “But I fear that Loki needs more than Earth medicine can offer him. I know you must have questions, and I’ll answer them the best I can, but...later. I promise.”

Tony pushes his glasses up his nose. “Is this, like, a human later or an Asgardian later, because. You know. Time scales.”

Thor cracks a smile at that. “A human later.”

“Ta-ta,” Loki says as the Bifrost carries them away.

*

The Bifrost deposits them just outside Thor’s door, and it makes enough of a spectacle that Val and Sif are racing over within seconds. Their reaction to the double shock of Loki being alive and Thor’s arm is expected but no less wearying for it, and Thor begs them to hold off their questions until he can get his own head screwed back on. Loki is a limp weight in his arms, his eyes closed now, his breathing shallow.

By the time that Thor gets Loki tucked into bed he’s running a fever.

“Go,” Thor tells his friends. “I’ll take care of him.”

“What about you?” Sif asks. “Who will take care of you?”

“Go,” Thor says again gently.

Loki’s fever doesn’t truly concern Thor, not really. Surely the Norns would not give Loki back just to steal him away immediately. His body has just been remade and some settling in is to be expected. And Loki has always been prone to fever, ever since childhood. It is simply how his body responds to stress. So Thor gives him soft pillows and blankets and soothes his sweaty brow with a rag dipped in cold water and sings him soft lullabies that their mother used to hum over their sickbeds. 

His own exhaustion is settling thick upon him, so Thor tucks himself up against his brother’s hot back, and he sleeps.

*

They sleep for three days.

Thor wakes after the first dreamless day all tangled in the sweaty sheets, and he stumbles out of bed to fetch them new blankets, drink some cool water, mop his brother’s forehead, and then fall back under.

This time he dreams. The regular sort, mostly. Nightmares sometimes. That he failed. That Loki is gone forever. Sometimes he starts awake and gropes for the body next to him, then, sighing, falls back asleep with his hand on his brother’s hip or on his thigh or clutching his hand.

On the third day he visits his mother. She is radiant and she kisses his face over and over. Thor tells her “I did it” and she says “I know” and Thor says “Loki said to tell you he didn’t mean what he said” and Frigga smiles and says “I know” and Thor says “Mother, Loki and I—that is, we—” and Frigga says “I _know_ ; oh, my beautiful boys” and kisses his face again and hugs him around the neck. Thor wakes that time with his heart in his throat and presses a long, trembling kiss to Loki’s sleeping cheek.

To have their mother’s blessing is not something he ever could have hoped for, and it eases an ache deep inside of him that he didn’t know was there.

It is sometime in the small hours of the morning, and Thor falls asleep again until the birds start singing the dawn, and then finally he wakes refreshed. Well, not refreshed exactly, but—awake. Alive. Ready.

“Good morning,” Loki says from Thor’s left. He’s still mostly buried under the covers, and he frees one of his arms to reach up and scratch lightly at Thor’s beard. Simple happiness blooms in Thor’s chest and a grin splits his face, which makes Loki smile too. Thor puts his hand over Loki’s and nuzzles into them. He’s been waking up next to Loki for awhile now, but this—

“I still can’t get over touching you,” Thor admits.

“I can’t get over touching anything at all,” Loki says. “You don’t know how strange having a body is until you haven’t had one for awhile. Do you know, I am _intimately_ aware of each one of my internal bodily functions right now, and let me tell you I don’t know if I’m happy about it.”

Thor laughs and kisses Loki’s palm, then scootches over to kiss his lips, and Loki makes a face.

“And morning breath. I’d forgotten about that completely. Not yours, mine. Ugh. You can kiss me but I forbid you to breathe. I need to preserve _some_ air of mystery.”

“I hate to break it to you,” Thor says, fingering a frizzy lock of Loki’s hair, “but after wallowing in your own sweat for three days you look a bit like a swamp hag.”

“I knew it.”

“Smell like one too.”

“Dreadful.”

“Morning breath is the least of your concerns.”

“My ego shall never recover.”

Thor kisses him to shut him up and because he can, and they start out smiling and end up panting into each other’s mouths.

“Stop,” Loki says, pushing Thor gently away. “I really would like to bathe first.” His stomach gurgles loudly. “And eat.”

Thor is loathe to give this up yet, so he kisses Loki’s cheeks and his chin and his lips and his nose, until Loki is really pushing him away, onto his back. Thor flops back onto his pillow and tries to look mournful and Loki takes pity on him and gives him one more long kiss before climbing over him to get out of bed.

Thor had stripped them bare, and he has a view now of Loki’s naked backside—his broad shoulders rippling as he stretches, the long line of his spine down to the globes of his ass and then his lovely long legs. His hair is almost brushing the bottoms of his shoulderblades, wavy and frizzy and segmented with sweat and sleep. He gathers it in his hands and twists into a tail, holds it up off his neck, and sighs, kneading at his neck muscles with his other hand.

The sheer physicality of it all is so much to take in. As a shade, Loki had looked always the same. Same clothes, same hair, same eyes, neverchanging. He had had no need to do things like stretch, or knead at his muscles. Thor wants to gather him up again, but instead he only watches as Loki disappears into the bathing room.

Thor rises and changes the bedding again, and gets them a pitcher of water, and scrounges up some dried fruit and hard sausage; he has no wish to leave and seek fresher food just yet. He washes his face in the basin, and the back of his neck, and his armpits, then rinses his mouth out with water from the pitcher. He debates getting dressed, but selfishly hopes it might not be necessary. Compromises by putting on pants but not a shirt.

Loki isn’t out yet.

Thor throws open the windows. Paces. Looks briefly down at the stump of his arm and resolves not to do that again for a bit.

Loki isn’t out yet.

Thor starts to worry.

He taps at the door, and when there’s no answer, not even an irritated “Can’t you leave me alone for five minutes”, he pushes it open.

The water is still on and Loki is huddled under the spray, on the floor, his tears mingling with the water dripping down his face. He’s hugging his knees to his chest and his shoulders are shaking.

Heedless of the water, Thor ducks down and pulls his naked sobbing brother into his lap in a one-armed embrace.

“It’s too much,” Loki is saying over and over again. “It’s too much, it’s too much.”

Thor gets the water turned off, wrangles a linen towel around Loki’s shivering form, and drags him back into the bed. He peels off his own soaked breeches and crawls in too. Loki curls against Thor’s chest and hides his face and Thor strokes his back, long gentle sweeps of his hand, and drops kisses onto his damp hair, until the bulk of the tension is out of him and his hands stop grasping at Thor’s shoulders quite so tightly.

“What’s too much?” Thor says finally when he thinks Loki might be able to talk. Loki shudders, a little shivering spasm like a chill passing through him.

“Everything,” Loki whispers. “Existing again. You. What you did. Your arm. Your _life_.” He chokes a little and Thor resumes stroking his back until he can speak again. “You tied yourself to me and you’ll grow to hate me for it.”

“No I won’t.”

“You will.”

“I’ve never hated you a minute of my life and I don’t intend to start.”

Loki is crying again, but it’s silent this time. The tears spill down his cheeks.

“I was _dead_ ,” Loki says raggedly. “I was really dead.”

“And now you’re not.”

“Maybe I should be.”

Thor kisses the tears from Loki’s cheeks and then kisses the sigh from his mouth.

Ever since Thanos had shown up, Thor had been lost, adrift in a world he no longer felt like he had a place in—angry and heartsick and confused—aimless, hopeless. He realizes he doesn’t feel like that anymore. There is a glimmer of his old self back. A sense of confidence. Purpose. Agency.

“I’m tired of living without you,” Thor says simply, “and I refuse to do it anymore. It was my choice. What good are five thousand years to me if you’re not in them?” Loki shakes his head mutely and Thor kisses his forehead. “I saw mother again. She knows. About this. She’s happy.”

Loki sobs out a laugh. “She probably knew a thousand years ago.”

“I bet she did,” Thor says, his own voice thick now too. “She always was smarter than both of us put together.”

Loki’s hair has dried into messy silky waves, and Thor buries his fingers in it, cupping Loki’s skull. He searches Loki’s eyes, probing, trying to figure out some way to make Loki feel any of the assuredness that Thor himself feels. That finally things are starting to feel right.

Maybe he can’t though. Maybe Loki has to come to it himself, like Thor has.

Loki pulls away from Thor’s touch a little bit.

“Sorry.” Loki grimaces. “It’s not—you were just a little close to my neck is all.”

Realization settles into Thor’s gut.

“You told me you didn’t remember,” Thor says, gently accusing.

Loki makes a tiny shrugging movement and won’t meet Thor’s eyes. “I lied.”

“Why?”

“You looked so sad, I didn’t have the heart to tell you. I don’t want to talk anymore right now, please, just…”

“You should rest.”

“Thank you,” Loki says gratefully. Thor makes to get up, give Loki some space, but Loki’s hand on his arm stops him. “You don’t have to go. Unless...you want to.”

Loki sounds so unsure and so small and Thor hates it. “I don’t want to.”

Taking Thor’s hand, Loki draws him back down until he’s spooning Loki from behind, and holds Thor’s hand with both of his. It’s such a simple gesture, and so tender, and the most vulnerable that Thor has seen his brother since they were small children. Thor settles in to hold Loki for as long as Loki needs him to.

Everything else can wait a little while longer.


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry I haven't been responding to comments you guys, I've been real busy, but I appreciate each and every one. Here is the next chapter and hope you enjoy. <3 We're getting towards the end now, although we're not there quite yet.

“How long was I gone?” Thor asks Val.

“Three weeks.”

Thor holds his right arm out for Eitri to measure, then the ruin of his left. Eitri frowns and goes back to his worktable to make more notes.

“Any emergencies while I was gone?”

“Not really. But Thor…” Val looks at him with pursed lips. “You can’t do that again. Sif and I held everything together, but only just. You need to establish some kind of official...chain of command or something.”

“I know. I’m sorry. I’ll put it at the top of my list.”

“I know full well what’s at the top of your list, and it isn’t picking out a cabinet.”

Thor smiles and looks down, staring at where his left arm ends just below the shoulder. The skin there is smooth and pink. The Norns had done a tidy job.

“I know,” Thor says.

“You also need to figure out how you’re going to get Loki out in public.”

“I’m working on it.”

“You’ve been back nearly a week, rumors are starting to fly—”

“Hey. I’ve got it. Don’t worry.”

Thor does understand. He does. He doesn’t quite have the words to explain it to Val though. How before he felt like he was moving through life in a fugue state, half dead and teetering on the edge. How in bringing Loki back he had brought a piece of himself back too—the piece of his heart that was his brother, to be sure, but also the determination and self-worth he’d won back along the way. How before the world had been gray, and now the sun was shining again.

He is ready now to finally fully take up this mantle of kingship that was thrust upon him, but first he needs to finish what he started. Loki may have come back in body, but his heart and his spirit are still wounded, and Thor will not leave him to try and repair himself alone.

“What do you think about uru?” Eitri asks, scribbling something down on his blueprints. “I have enough of it I think, and obviously you’re familiar with it. Its electricity channeling properties are unmatched.”

“A whole arm of uru?” Thor asks. “Whatever you think is best.”

“It will be a bit heavy,” Eitri muses. “You’re strong enough for certain, though it might affect your balance. But...maybe if I made _this_ part hollow…” He trails off, mumbling to himself.

“Speaking of the top of my list,” Thor says quietly to Val, “I need to go check on him.” Then, to Eitri, “Do you need anything else?”

“Hmm? What? Oh, no no, go go.” Eitri waves them off.

*

Loki isn’t in their longhouse. Undeterred, Thor jumps up and grabs the edge of the roof, hauls himself up, and makes his way up to the ridge at the top. He sits there, perched at the apex with his legs folded, enjoying the sun on his face.

It isn’t long before a magpie wings out of the forest, circles the house twice, then lands next to to Thor. A shimmering wash of green-gold and then Loki is sitting in its place.

Thor lifts his arm and Loki tucks himself underneath it and they sit in comfortable silence until the sun moves past the tops of the trees and casts them in shadow. Loki shivers slightly.

“Alright?” Thor murmurs. He’s stroking Loki’s arm with his thumb, slow and even.

“Just a chill.”

*

Loki has been spending much of his days in animal form. He claims that it’s easier. That experiencing the world through a simpler lens helps him not be so overwhelmed.

At night though, he shares Thor’s bed and they fall asleep with their arms around each other, no space between them at all. Sometimes Thor kisses his neck, his shoulders, squeezes his arms. Runs his hand down Loki’s ribs to his hip. Spreads his hand out over Loki’s chest. Loki nuzzles into him in return, seeming to take just as much comfort in Thor’s body as Thor is taking in his. They haven’t gone any further than kissing. Thor doesn’t mind. Simple touching like this is still Thor’s favorite thing to do. He’s gone his whole life with less than this, so he’ll not be greedy and push for more.

“I’m sorry,” Loki whispers one night in the dark. He’s tracing circles on Thor’s chest, one big one in the middle and then smaller ones around each of Thor’s nipples.

“For what?”

“Coming back all wrong.”

“Stop,” Thor says gently. “You’re perfect.”

“Perfectly broken.”

“Perfectly perfect.”

Loki kisses him and strokes at his beard.

“No, that’s you,” Loki says.

*

The next night, Loki stays away until well after dark. Thor climbs into bed without him, feeling uneasy. He’s been tossing around for an hour when a small bobcat pads into the room.

It stands there staring at Thor, eyes glowing in the dark.

“Come to bed,” Thor says, lifting the sheet.

The cat tosses its head.

“Please.”

It sits back on its haunches, looking at him.

Thor gets out of bed and down on to the floor.

“Loki,” he says, reaching out to pet his brother’s head, scratch behind his ears, and the cat leans into his touch before shimmering back into Loki. He’s curled up on himself and there are tear tracks on his cheeks and Thor pulls him into his lap and rocks him.

“I keep thinking that any day you’re going to realize what a mistake you made,” Loki says, sniffling. “That this wasn’t worth it. That _I_ —”

“I love you,” Thor says. Loki makes a small scoffing noise.

“That’s not the point.”

“I would do it again.” Silence. Thor stroking Loki’s back. Kissing the top of Loki’s head. “In a heartbeat I would do it again. Don’t you see? I’ve gained back so much more than I’ve lost.”

Loki sniffles.

“Your real problem,” Thor continues. “Is that now _you’re_ stuck with _me_.”

That earns him a tiny laugh.

“I guess I did literally rip myself out of the Norn’s tapestry for you,” Loki says.

“And I literally traveled to hell to get you back.”

“Maybe we might be even.”

Loki tips his face up for a kiss and Thor gives it to him.

“My new arm should be done tomorrow,” Thor says. “Will you come with me for the fitting?”

Loki goes perfectly still. It would be the first time that he would really show himself in public since he got back.

“Perhaps,” Loki says finally. Thor gives him a squeeze.

“Come to bed now?”

They fall asleep with Loki spooned around Thor, his lips pressed between Thor’s shoulderblades and his leg thrown over Thor’s thighs and Thor thinks there is nowhere he’d rather be.

*

Everyone knows that Loki is back, though Thor has elected not to make any grand announcement about Loki’s return. It would only spark more questions than it would answer, and Loki has already died in the public eye and come back so many times that the people just accept it as one of their Prince’s many quirks. Only Val and Sif know the truth of it.

This will be his first time out in public in any royal capacity.

Loki spends more time than usual getting ready, smoothing his hair for the fifth time, changing his clothes, frowning at himself in the mirror.

“You look wonderful,” Thor assures him, and Loki sighs.

“I look like I’ve aged a century in a decade.”

Thor comes up behind him and puts his arm around Loki’s middle, kisses his cheek.

“We all have,” Thor says. “But you are no less beautiful for it.”

Loki settles on black leggings and a simple black v-neck tunic that fastens on the side, with gold embroidery at the hems and a belt around the waist, and his signature green cape. It’s much more spare than his fashion usually dictates, but it seems fitting for this new more spare version of Loki. It’s like he’s a marble statue, and all the excess rock has been chipped away until the true form underneath has finally been completely exposed.

Except Thor well knows that, unlike marble, Loki’s body is warm and yielding. Though the thought of getting his new arm is exciting, Thor would like nothing more right now than to tumble them both into bed. Part that fine tunic and kiss Loki’s pale chest. Hear Loki’s gasps of pleasure as Thor pleases him in every way he knows how. Show him how lovely he truly is and how Thor desires him completely, every part of him—his body and his heart and his spirit in all their perfect imperfection.

Thor catches Loki as he walks towards the door. “There is no inch of you I wouldn’t like to kiss,” Thor murmurs into Loki’s mouth.

Loki scoffs but his cheeks redden, and Thor kisses each one of them in turn.

“I would spend a week in bed with you if you’d let me,” Thor says. “Until you’d forgotten everything but how good I could make you feel.”

“Ohh,” Loki breathes shakily. He closes his eyes and lets his forehead rest against Thor’s shoulder. “You’re rotten, to say such things when we’re on our way out the door.”

“Would you let me?” Thor asks softly.

Loki nods against him. “Thank you for waiting for me to be ready,” he says. “Add another item to the list of things I don’t deserve but that you give me anyway. You’re racking up quite a debt.”

“Hey, don’t talk like that,” Thor says. Loki’s tone had been fairly light, and Thor knows he should let it go right now, get them out the door, but for some reason it bothers him more than usual this morning. He hates when Loki says these things. As though he is a lesser being, unworthy of Thor’s love. “It’s not a business transaction.”

He’s touched a nerve, because Loki pulls away.

“I don’t like feeling like I’m constantly...taking charity from you,” Loki says, a little bitterly. “What can I possibly offer you that in any way compares to what you offer me?”

“You don’t need to offer me anything,” Thor says, frustrated. “You just...you _are_ , and that’s enough. Brother—” He takes Loki’s hand and laces their fingers together.

“From the first day mother brought you to me, you’ve been the dearest to my heart,” Thor says. “Don’t you feel the same way?” It makes him feel sick that Loki could possibly doubt this, could _not_ feel the same way.

“Of course I do,” Loki says, his right eyebrow climbing towards his hairline, the corners of his mouth downturned. He looks utterly miserable.

Thor’s voice is rough with intensity. The words come out of him without conscious thought, his tongue finally giving form to the thoughts swirling inside him. “I lived without you and I’m not interested in doing it again. I was already dead before you came back. And the Norns gave me more than just you. The road to them was long and I found lost pieces of myself on the way there. They gave me myself too. Do you understand? I have more than I ever thought I would have again. You told me once never to doubt that you loved me, and I ask you now to do the same. I will never stop. My only regret is that it took losing everything to realize what we already had.”

Loki is silently crying by the end of it, tears spilling down his cheeks when he blinks. Inadequate though his words feel, this is the closest Thor has been able to come to explaining his feelings; he hopes desperately that maybe now Loki can finally begin to understand. Loki buries himself in Thor’s chest and Thor holds him. Thor might be content to just stand like this, wrapped in each other until Valhalla finally calls for both of them, but eventually after long moments they break apart. Loki squeezes Thor’s shoulders and Thor chucks him lightly under the chin. Loki closes his eyes briefly and smiles.

“We’re going to be late,” Loki says. “Let me fix my face and then let’s go get you that arm.”

*

The walk down to Eitri’s forge seems to take twice as long as usual. They exit the longhouse and make their way down the trail, past the wrestling grounds and on to the main settlement, then down the center avenue to the square, and beyond it to the far edge. There are many eyes on them as they go, and whispers. Nods of the head. A few bows. One man drops to a knee, and Loki lets him kiss his hand.

“Who was that?” Thor murmurs.

“I’ve no idea,” Loki murmurs back.

Eitri is waiting for them, and he beams happily. He has a stout house of his own, half again as tall as any of the Asgardians’ dwellings. The area around it is cleared down to the dirt to accommodate his outdoor forge, and next to the forge is his open air work area, shielded from the sun and the rain by a wooden roof on four thick posts.

“I think you’re going to like this,” Eitri says. “Come see.”

The arm he presents to them is magnificent. It’s made of hundreds of overlapping layers that can slide past each other so that it bends and twists just like a real arm. Each finger is delicately articulated for fine motor control.

“It should be stronger than your real arm,” Eitri is saying, “more resistant. Channels electricity marvelously, as you know. Doesn’t rust. It might even be an improvement.”

“Will I be able to feel it like a real arm?” Thor asks, slightly amused.

Eitri’s face falls. “Oh, ah, no.”

“Don’t worry my friend, I’m only teasing,” Thor says, slapping him on the back. “It looks wonderful. Can you show me how to put it on?”

Eitri guides Thor’s maimed arm into the new one, and fastens the straps around Thor’s chest. Having a weight on his left side again is amazing. The metal isn’t cold, it’s warm, and it feels alive. Just like Mjolnir used to. It’s such a familiar feeling that Thor exhales a sigh of contentment. 

“Obviously this is just a fitting,” Eitri says. “It can’t move yet. We’ll put a motor in it, or maybe hydraulics. I’m not sure. I thought your friend Stark might be able to help with that part.”

“No need,” Loki says.

At Eitri’s questioning look, Loki smiles with one side of his mouth and holds up his hand, palm up. A wash of magic plays over it.

Thor gives Loki his left side and Loki lays both hands on the metal. A warm tingling rush spreads through Thor’s body, and the uru glows green and gold

“Oh,” Thor says. He can suddenly _feel_ the arm. Not exactly like the arm he lost, for nothing ever could be, but there all the same. He wiggles his fingers. The uru responds as quickly and easily as his real fingers would have. He flexes his wrist, bends his elbow. Touches his finger to the table and feels the roughness of the wooden tabletop.

Loki is looking at him with a satisfied expression and hopeful eyes.

Grinning, Thor claps his hands together, then spreads his arms wide and scoops Loki up into a giant bear hug.

“Hey!” Loki squawks, thrashing, but Thor only laughs and squeezes him tighter.

“I can finally hug you properly!”

Thor sets Loki down with a big obnoxious smacking kiss to the lips, and Loki goes “pfaw!” and wipes at his mouth with the back of his hand.

“You’re a brute,” Loki complains, but his eyes are dancing. He points to the leather bands holding the arm around Thor’s chest. “You shouldn’t need those straps anymore either.” Loki pulls out a dagger and cuts them off, and true to his word the arm stays put.

“Thank you,” Thor says earnestly to Loki, then turns to Eitri. “And thank _you_. This is better than I ever could have hoped for.”

Eitri looks both pleased and embarrassed. “It was nothing,” he says.

“It’s a marvel of engineering,” Thor says. “And you have all of my gratitude. Tell me, do you know anything about the floating city-state of Vespia?”

“What? Why?” Eitri asks.

Thor claps him on the back again and winks. “I’ll tell you later.”

*

Later, in the dark, Loki whispers. “What was that about Vespia earlier?”

“I may have an idea how to get us off this rock,” Thor says. “Make us our own home.”

“You want to make us a floating city-state too?”

Thor shrugs. “Maybe.”

“Hmm.”

“Do you think it sounds like a good idea?”

“I know what sounds like a better idea right now. Kiss me.”

“Mmm,” Thor says, and does.


	14. Chapter 14

Thor wakes up and instinctively reaches for Loki, but his hand finds nothing but rumpled sheets. Blinking and rubbing the sleep from his eyes, he rolls over. Loki is sitting by the window looking out. He’s nude to the waist, his hair a loose tumble around his shoulders. Dawn is just breaking and the sky is still rosy and the soft light catches on Loki’s curls, on the ridge of his cheekbone, the rounded tops of his shoulders.

Carefully, not wanting to disturb the moment, Thor reaches for his Starkphone on the bedstand. He thumbs the camera on and taps the shutter button as many times as he can get away with. He ends up with a montage of Loki’s reaction—his profile still and calm in repose, a long blink, the blur of his hand reaching up to tuck his hair behind his ear, his face in three quarter profile and then full on as Loki turns towards him, the neutral expression on his face turning into tight-lipped exasperation, his eyes rolling, his arm reaching for the camera.

“You are extremely irritating,” Loki says, taking the phone and flipping through the pictures.

“Come here,” Thor says and pats the bed next to him.

Loki slots himself into Thor’s side and Thor snags the phone from him, then holds it at arm’s length and takes more pictures. Loki’s head on his shoulder, mock glaring. Thor kissing Loki’s temple and Loki’s face relaxing into a smile. Loki turning his cheek into Thor’s shoulder and kissing the little knob of his collarbone, and Thor’s resulting blush. Thor turning his head for a kiss and Loki reaching up to give it to him. Their parted lips touching, their eyelids fluttering shut. Loki’s hand stealing into Thor’s hair.

“Look,” Thor says when they break apart. He flicks back through his photo album until he gets to one of Loki smiling. “Look at you.”

“Stop,” Loki says and blacks the screen. “You’re helplessly sentimental.”

“Mm, maybe so.” Then, “I need to go to Earth. Probably for a few days, a week at most. Will you come with me?”

Loki makes a face.

“Can’t you go anywhere without me?” Loki asks.

“Why would I want to?”

*

Eitri comes too and they stay at Stark’s tower for a week and a day.

It’s enough time for Thor to see and catch up with many of his human friends. Banner seems to live there, and Rogers and his shieldmate Barnes live nearby, and the rest of them drop in as they’re able. They all squint warily at Loki, and Loki bares his teeth in a not-smile in return, but if anyone has anything bad to say they wisely keep it to themselves. Not just because Loki would doubtless skewer any of them alive in a heartbeat, but because Thor will obviously hear no word against him either.

Thor doesn’t try to hide his physical affection for his brother at all. And for his part, Loki seems to revel in the discomfort it causes everyone. Making people uncomfortable has always been delightful to him and Thor is happy that this seems not to have changed. Thor supposes that maybe he should feel bad about it, but he can’t muster up the guilt. Their love is not something to squirrel away in the dark, invisible to all but themselves. It is something to celebrate, to nurture in the light, to let grow tall and strong. He is forever done taking any conscious part in making Loki feel like he’s living in a shadow.

They are gods, after all. Let them act like it. 

And so Thor takes his brother’s hand whenever he wants to. Puts his arm around his waist. Leans his ear in for Loki’s whispers, kisses his temple. And Loki does the same, and Thor never pulls away.

Despite their wariness, everyone is eager to know what happened. How Loki is back from the dead. Thor tells them an abbreviated version of the events, Loki quietly interjecting at times. More than one of them seems shocked that something like an afterlife is actually a real thing. Not for the first time, Thor feels a sort of fond pity for these helpless creatures. There is so much they don’t know, and their lives are so short. And yet they muddle through as best they can. It’s admirable, really.

They all want to examine Thor’s new arm, Stark especially.

When Thor tells Stark they’ll only need one bed the first night, Stark’s eyebrows reach the stratosphere. “Kinky,” he says, the first open admission anyone has made of Thor and Loki’s new relationship. Thor winks at him and Loki makes a rude gesture, and Stark laughs. “I don’t know what you did to deserve this, Reindeer Games, but I hope you appreciate it.”

Thor winces. The words are a little close to home.

Loki slams the bathroom door shut when they get into their suite, and the water runs for a long time.

The second day, over breakfast (taken out on the deck, because Eitri is far too large to sit comfortably in the kitchen), Thor brings up the real reason for the visit, and why he brought Eitri as well.

“We’ve settled on Vanaheim for now,” Thor says, “but it’s untenable. It was always going to be. Asgard—Asgardia—is the Realm Eternal. We need our own space, not simply borrowed space from somewhere else. And that’s where you come in.”

“Me?” Stark says. “Are you sure about that? Because, uh, I don’t really think—”

“You,” Thor says firmly. “We have no land of our own so we’ll simply make it.”

“Make it? Ookay. From what? And then put it...where…?”

Thor smiles and points upwards.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“The sky. It’s going to float. I’m going to talk to the Wakandans about some vibranium, and then Eitri here will forge it into something that can channel magic, and that combined with your repulsor technology…” Thor spreads his hands wide, a satisfied grin on his face.

Stark stares at him with his mouth gaping for a second before he snaps it shut.

“Are all gods literally insane?”

“Yes,” Loki says with one of his feral tooth-baring smiles.

*

“I don’t want to be here,” Loki says. They’re in bed in the suite Stark gave them and he’s lying on his back staring at the ceiling.

“You didn’t have to come,” Thor says.

“Didn’t I? Isn’t that what I have to do from now on?”

It’s that same anxiety gnawing at Loki again. That he owes Thor. That this is a debt that must be repaid. That Thor’s love is conditional.

“Is this what’s been eating at you so much?” Thor asks. “Do you think that just because I did what I did that...what? You have to do everything I say?”

Loki turns away from him onto his side. “Something like that,” he mutters.

Thor makes a noise of frustration. “Would you rather be back on Vanaheim then?”

“No. I don’t want to be anywhere.”

“Then what is it?”

Loki’s back is one big knot of tension, his shoulders bowed inward. Thor wants to hold him, but thinks that maybe he shouldn’t right now. Silence stretches for long moments, not empty, but the kind that’s full of unspoken words building up and up until they beg to be let free. Thor waits.

“I feel trapped,” Loki says finally, quietly, like the words pain him. “Like whether I want to or not that I _have_ to stay with you, have to give myself to you, have to do whatever you want or ask because...because anything else would be horrifyingly ungrateful and…”

“No—”

“That _I_ don’t exist anymore, that I’m only here to be an extension of _you_ —”

“No. That’s not how it is. You exist. You’re your own person. You’re free to do whatever you want with your life—”

“And if that life didn’t include you? If I wanted to disappear off into the universe and never speak your name again?”

Thor feels pierced through the heart, and his voice is rough when he says, “Then I would wish you well and miss you terribly.”

“You’d let me go, just like that?”

Loki’s words are dangerous, a test. Thor wishes he could see Loki’s face.

“What do you want me to say?” Thor says. “That I would keep you here by force? By emotional blackmail? Of course I wouldn’t. I couldn’t bear it. I don’t want a tame pet. I want _you_ , in all your wildness and mischief and quicksilver fury. Do you want to go? Is that what you want to do?”

“No,” Loki whispers. “I don’t.”

“Then _what_?”

“Unless I know I can leave, I can’t stay. Can’t you see? It has to be a choice.”

“Go,” Thor says. “Go and come back then. Stay away as long as you like. I’ll wait for you. Until the day we die I’ll wait for you.”

This is part of the Norns’ price, Thor knows now. This trauma. This guilt. The love that had inspired Thor’s act now the very thing driving a wedge between them; the bond that they had forged in death now sorely tested in life. They had shared such easy affection when Loki was a shade—good humor, sweet words, tender gestures—the one night they’d come undone for each other—and now—

“Now I feel like you’re trying to _make_ me go,” Loki chokes out. “Isn’t that ridiculous? I’m such a mess—”

Thor does wrap his arms around Loki then, presses his chest to Loki’s back and holds him while he shakes. 

“I hate this place,” Loki says out of nowhere. “This tower, these people. They die the second they’re born. Even the air is wrong here. It stinks. I can hardly breathe.”

“That’s the pollution,” Thor says.

“It’s disgusting. I want to go home.”

Thor squeezes him tighter. He knows Loki isn’t talking about Vanaheim.

“I do too,” Thor says, his chest aching with what can never be. “More than anything.”

“Thor. What do we _do_?”

Thor kisses the back of Loki’s neck. “Make a new home. Love each other. What else _can_ we do?”

Thor kisses the back of Loki’s neck again, and Loki shivers and then reaches up behind him to grasp the back of Thor’s head and pull his face closer.

“My love is a selfish thing. It will only disappoint you.”

“You think too much,” Thor says against Loki’s shoulder.

“Then help me not think.”

Loki turns in Thor’s arms and lifts his chin. Thor remembers the night of Freyr and Freyja’s birthday ball and how certain Loki had been then. Hungry. Asking Thor to undress. To touch himself. Whispered words from his wicked tongue taking Thor apart. There is no certainty in Loki now. He looks open and raw and fragile.

“Brother,” Thor says, stroking his cheek.

“Is that what I am?”

“Brother. Loki. _Cow_. Dearest.”

“Yours.”

“Not mine. You don’t belong to anyone.”

“What if I wanted to?”

“You’re talking yourself around in circles again.”

Loki closes his eyes and exhales deeply through his nose. “Touch me, then?”

Thor strokes down Loki’s arm, up his chest, slips his hand inside the deep vee of Loki’s tunic to pull it aside so he can dip his head and kiss his collarbone. “Like this?”

“Yes.”

Loki lifts his shoulder for Thor to slip the tunic over it and tug it down, and he follows the path with his mouth, down to Loki’s elbow, then over to mouth at his ribs, rub his nose into the dip of Loki’s waist. Thor’s hand rests on the swell of Loki’s bottom and he scrapes his teeth against Loki’s hipbone. “And this?”

“Yes,” Loki says, running his hands through the short hair at the back of Thor’s neck. “Just like that.”

They’ve never done more than this, not since Loki got back, and Thor wants desperately to take it further, but he doesn’t want to take anything he isn’t being offered freely.

“We don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do,” Thor says. “You’re not… _obligated_ —”

“I’ve dreamed of fucking you for the past five hundred years,” Loki says, and Thor’s breath catches. “I think it’s past time.”

Thor surges up to meet his mouth and Loki winds his arms around Thor’s neck. Thor pushes him down into the bed. He’s hard already, and so is Loki, and their hips push insistently against each other. “ _Ahh_ ,” Loki gasps, throwing his head back and digging his nails into Thor’s back. Though this is a line they’ve really already crossed, it feels new. Like they’re discovering each other for the very first time. Maybe they are.

“I won’t last,” Loki says, rueful laughter in his voice, and grinds himself helplessly against the crease of Thor’s groin. “Gods. _Thor_.”

“I won’t either,” Thor admits. He’s aflame with desire and love both and he feels as giddy as a boy. Loki hooks his heel around the back of Thor’s thigh and bucks hard into him and Thor groans. He wants to bite at Loki’s neck and only stops himself at the last moment, instead taking Loki’s lower lip between his teeth and swallowing Loki’s whine.

“I can’t—I’m already—” Loki says, and then wet warmth blooms between them and Loki shudders, his fingers spasming, grasping at Thor’s shoulders, and Thor ruts through it, coming on a long stuttered breath with his brother’s name on his lips. He comes back to himself with all his weight resting on his brother and their bellies a sticky mess between them.

“Norns, that was embarrassing,” Loki says, and Thor shushes him with a kiss.

“We’ll just have to practice,” Thor says. “Extensively.”

Thor settles back onto his side and Loki touches his cheek.

“We’ll only hurt each other, you know,” Loki says quietly after a moment. It’s clear he’s not talking about sex.

Thor holds Loki’s hand to his face and tries not to drown in the wells of Loki’s eyes. “That’s how you know it’s worth it.”


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this chapter took so long. Summer break started and my writing time went down to practically zero. Anyway, thank you to everyone who came on this journey with me and also thank you to everyone who will find this story after it's done. <3 Your feedback and support has been invaluable. Love and kisses from me to you, and I hope you enjoy the ending. <3 As always, come follow me at [raven-brings-light.tumblr.com](https://raven-brings-light.tumblr.com).

Thor spends the next month traveling back and forth between Vanaheim, New York, Wakanda, and Nidavellir. He has a moment of surprise the first time he gets to Wakanda and it’s not Queen Shuri who greets him, but her brother King T’challa. He’d forgotten that she was a younger sibling, and now that her brother is restored she is Queen no longer.

“Shuri is down in her workshop,” T’challa tells him. “But I am certain she will be pleased to see you.”

Thor finally gets Stark, Shuri, and Eitri in the same place and they don’t quite know what to make of each other at first. Stark has never had access to this much vibranium, and neither of the humans has ever dealt with magic before.

“It’s not magic, really,” Eitri rumbles, amused. “It’s just another way to manipulate reality. Think of it like...you know one of the universe’s languages, and I know another. You just have to learn how to speak it.”

“But this bit here,” Shuri says, pointing to one of Eitri’s plans, “how would you even do this? You’d need a heat source hotter than anything we can produce—”

“That’s where my forge at Nidavellir would come in—”

While the scientists conspire, Thor gets to know T’challa and negotiates the trade. The Asgardians have nothing material to offer in exchange for the vibranium, but what they do have is knowledge.

“Many of our engineers survive,” Thor says as he and T’challa take a turn about the gardens. “We can help advance your technology by centuries—”

Sometimes Loki accompanies Thor on his many excursions and sometimes he doesn’t. When he doesn’t, sometimes he shifts into animal form when Thor leaves and doesn’t turn back until Thor returns. Sometimes he remains himself and steps into his place as Thor’s second-in-command, the Prince he has always been, there to rule when the King is absent.

Some of their people whisper. That Loki is just biding his time to usurp Thor the way he usurped Odin. That they’ve had enough of his rule already, and that he has no business being anywhere near the throne. Or, more fancifully, that he is a draugr, or a wight. Most of the people welcome Loki back, though. He has been a beloved Prince for far longer than he’s been an outcast and in truth his rule had been a prosperous and peaceful one. And there are so few of them left that most are simply happy that one fewer of their dwindling number is lost.

Thor’s relationship with his brother is not secret. This is another thing that might have been more scandalous in times past, but that now people more or less accept. In the face of so much loss, they’ve all come to acknowledge that they must take comfort where they can find it. Perhaps it helps that they’ve been living on Vanaheim, with its sibling-consort rulers, and that in truth the brothers had always been openly closer than was strictly appropriate; Thor has heard rumors of more than one bet exchanging hands the first time he and Loki were seen indisputably “together” in public.

“I hadn’t wanted to tell you,” Sif tells Thor at one point over a shared meal, “but back home, before... One of the more popular shows in the pleasure district featured lookalikes of you and Loki _together_ —”

Thor nearly chokes on his mead. “Truly?”

Sif laughs. “Truly. Fandral wanted to tell you right away the moment we found out. He wanted to _bring you to see it_ , actually, but I threatened to cut his ears off and make him wear them as a necklace.”

“It’s good you didn’t tell us,” Loki says drily, “because _I_ would have cut off the performers’ manhoods and made them eat them.”

Thor laughs and squeezes Loki’s thigh under the table, and Loki knocks into him with his foot.

Loki is the one who drags Thor up the path to their longhouse that night, shoves him inside, and pushes him up against the door. They kiss hungrily, messily.

“Let me fuck you tonight,” Loki says, holding Thor’s head in place against the door while he bites at Thor’s lower lip. He sounds a little rough, a little desperate.

That first quick fumble in Stark’s tower has unleashed something in both of them, a hunger that though they try to sate it over and over again only grows with each heated press of their bodies. A thousand years together and Thor has never before known the taste of his brother’s skin, the weight of his cock on his tongue, the way he arches when Thor fucks into him just the right way, how his legs shake as he comes apart—these are secrets that are now freely given, spoken in a language that Thor never had occasion to learn until now, and Thor knows that there is no sweeter thing this side of Valhalla. 

Thor has been offering up his own secrets in return. The taste of his spend and sweat and tears. How Loki can reduce him to wracking shudders so quickly that it might have been embarrassing if he weren’t so out of his mind. The way Thor’s voice hitches as he pleads with his brother to fuck him _harder, faster, more, gods, **more**_.

These are the words that fall from Thor’s lips tonight as Loki rocks into him, hard and sweet. Loki kisses him and bites his lip hard as he spills, then swallows Thor’s cock down until Thor paints the back of his throat with hot spend of his own.

Thor can’t stop kissing Loki afterwards. He cradles his brother’s sharp face and chases his own taste on Loki’s tongue, until, grumbling, Loki shoves him onto his back.

“We need to sleep,” Loki says, yawning.

Thor would gladly forego sleep. Each time he closes his eyes means the end of another day that they have together, and he never quite wants any of them to end.

“Alright,” Thor acquiesces.

*

Thor arrives in the lavender fields surrounding a large chateau in the French countryside. He hadn’t wanted to mar the beauty of the gardens with a smoking Bifrost site, so he’s elected to walk the last bit of the journey to the estate proper. He proffers his arm to Loki, who rolls his eyes but takes it anyway.

They make a splendid-looking pair, Thor knows. Loki has magicked their outfits specially for the occasion. Loki looks smug in a gleaming iridescent feather coat that brushes the tops of his boots, while Thor is clad in an intricately filigreed breastplate and a jewel bright cape that streams behind him like a smear of red paint across the green and dusty purple of the landscape.

He would cut a finer figure if his hair were longer, Thor knows. The thought is a vain and petty one, which ironically makes Thor smile dolefully. If he’s worried about something as foolish as his hair, he must well and truly be coming back to himself.

Thor unthinkingly runs his hand up the back of his neck to rub upwards through the short hairs at his nape and Loki notices.

“I should have filleted the Grandmaster the second he did this to you,” Loki muses, chasing Thor’s fingers with his own, smoothing his hair back down.

“I’d liked to have seen that,” Thor says. “Although I’m sure you hated him a bit more than I did.”

“I’m sure that I did.”

They’re expected at the mansion, and the gate to the long drive leading up to the estate swings open as they approach. There are more people arriving by car, by horsedrawn carriage, by personal helicopter. Though a bit dull for Thor’s tastes, everyone is dressed to the nines by Earth standards. The front door is a bustle of activity. Thor and Loki sail inside, ignoring the chaos around them.

“Thor!” Steve calls out happily. He’s wearing something that Thor has heard the humans call a “tuxedo” and has a spray of flowers pinned to his breast, and he’s grinning ear to ear. He pulls Thor into a fond back-slapping embrace. “I’m so glad you made it. Pepper is going to be so happy to see you.”

“Jury’s out on whether she’ll be happy to see me,” Loki says with an unfriendly smile.

“You’ll have to guide us through the ceremony,” Thor says quickly, trying to spare Steve the awkwardness of replying. “I’m afraid I’m not familiar with Earth weddings.”

Steve ignores Loki in favor of Thor and huffs out a little laugh. “Well there’s more than one kind of Earth wedding, but I think you’ll pick up on it pretty fast.”

“He loves you in a way the others do not,” Loki murmurs in Thor’s ear a few moments later when Steve gets pulled off into another conversation. “As a friend and a brother-in-arms and maybe even a little as a god.”

“We are both men out of time here,” Thor says. “And we both know the pain of outliving those we love. He’s a good man. We stayed up many a night bemoaning the lack of properly intoxicating alcohol.” Thor looks at Loki sidelong. “And the ache of missing your other half.”

Loki snorts. “And people call me the melodramatic one.”

Thor takes Loki’s hand and opens his mouth to say something, but Loki cuts him off.

“Hush. I can tell you’re about to say something serious and I know.” Loki brings their hands up to kiss Thor’s knuckles. “I really do. But right now I want to try every single one of those ridiculously fussy-looking hors d'oeuvres in that display over there. And is that a _chocolate fountain_ —Norns, at least these mortals are good for something—”

Loki’s casual kiss lingers on Thor’s knuckles and Thor is struck all over again by the easy affection that Loki shows him now. 

The brothers Odinson stick out like sore thumbs and are soon swarmed with attention. Thor bears it all with amused grace. Loki uses the opportunity to insult, intimidate, or make nervous everyone who makes the mistake of talking to him.

“Hey pal,” Thor hears from behind him, and he turns in surprise to find Rocket perched on Tree’s shoulder and both of them smiling. 

“I am Groot!”

“My friends!” Thor beams.

“Quill made us wear these,” Rocket says, tugging the the bowtie around his neck, “and I still ain’t sure if he’s bullshitting me or not.”

“Fear not, Rabbit,” Thor says. “I’ve seen many people wearing them already today. But, come, look, Loki’s here!”

“Loki? Your dead brother…?”

“Not so dead any longer,” Loki says, stepping out from behind Thor and looking the unlikely duo up and down. “Rabbit, is it?”

Rocket looks Loki up and down appraisingly. “Rocket. Only one person can call me Rabbit and that’s Thor. And you ain’t Thor.”

“To everyone’s unending disappointment.”

“I am Groot.”

“Yes, I remember you. Unfortunately I don’t speak your language quite as well as my brother does.”

Thor catches up with them while Loki sips a drink and looks bored. The rest of their crew is here as well; Stark had fought Thanos with them on Titan and he’d become rather close with Nebula in the wake of The Snap.

“That’s uh, some arm ya got there,” Rocket points out. “I don’t suppose you have any more of those lyin’ around, huh?”

“If you steal this off of my body I’m going to be impressed,” Thor laughs. “But angry. No I don’t have any more lying around. It’s one of a kind.”

The ceremony is held outside. Stark flies in in an Iron Man suit, to absolutely no one’s surprise. Pepper walks gracefully down a path of flowers in a white sheath dress that clings to the roundness of her belly and accentuates it. Stark has told Thor that the baby is due in about three months; humans’ gestations are short like their mayfly lives.

Short through their lives may be, however, they do try to burn brightly in the time that they have. Thor looks around and sees the faces of all the Avengers he’s worked with, and Rocket’s crew, and the Wakandans, and Strange, and everyone else that he’s ever met on Earth, really. All of them fierce and willing to lay their lives down in defense of others, and all here in celebration. A cry to the universe that love matters, that life goes on, that no matter how devastating the fire that regrowth always comes afterwards. And Thor is here too, his own tender buds finally pushing back up through the dirt, and Loki is at his side. And, feeling his heart swell with emotion, Thor thinks of Asgardia as well, and how the construction has already begun on their new home. It all hits him at once and Thor is—for the first time in a long time—simply, uncomplicatedly happy.

“Why are you smiling like that?” Loki says under his breath from the seat next to Thor, and in answer Thor only smiles wider.

They return home to their longhouse hours later full of food and drink, and, at least in Thor’s case, a pleasant happy buzz of energy.

“I pulled the Captain aside,” Thor tells Loki as he removes his cape and boots. “It struck me that he’ll outlive everyone he knows except for Barnes. I told him that when the time comes, if it ever does, that he’s welcome here.”

“That was kind of you,” Loki says, but his heart doesn’t sound in it. He’s looking out the window. What he’s looking for Thor can’t fathom—both of Vanaheim’s moons are down tonight and the darkness is almost complete. It’s something else, then. Looking outward to gaze inward. The lines of Loki’s body are tight and tense and he’s worrying at one hand with the other. Thor rises from where he’s sitting on the edge of the bed and comes up behind Loki, squeezing his shoulders and beginning to knead the tension out of them, trying to impart some of his own good feelings from the night into his brother. Loki starts to sag under his touch and lets out a long sigh.

“I hope you’re not feeling too tired,” Thor says, kissing the curve of Loki’s shoulder. “Because I am decidedly not.”

They end up with Loki perched naked at the foot of the bed, legs spread wide, and Thor on his knees with his head bobbing between Loki’s trembling thighs.

“Stop teasing me and fuck me,” Loki groans, squeezing his legs around Thor’s neck. “ _Gods_.”

Loki is in a mood and he goads Thor to go hard. He doesn’t want tenderness tonight. He wants it rough and wild. And he wants it again. And again. Thor gives it to him, because he would give Loki nearly anything, and in truth it satisfies something primal within him as well—something that yearns to conquer and possess—and Loki is such a willing prize.

After they’ve both spilled for the third time, they collapse, boneless and sweaty. Thor feels empty and full at the same time. He gathers Loki into his chest, and Loki melts against him, finally pliant and spent. Loki wraps his arms around Thor’s chest and nuzzles his face into the crook of Thor’s shoulder and he sleeps.

Thor wakes from a squirmy, aching dream some time in the dark early hours of the morning to find Loki languidly stroking him back to hardness.

“What—” Thor starts.

“Shh.” Loki silences him with a finger on his lips. Then he’s climbing over to straddle Thor’s hips, to line himself up and sink down onto his cock slowly, his head back and his mouth open as he takes Thor into himself inch by inch.

It’s gentler this time. Slow and deep. Loki moulds himself to Thor’s front and mouths at his neck while his hips undulate. Thor wraps his arms all the way around Loki’s back and holds him there, meeting every rock and dip with a thrust of his own. He’d hold Loki forever like this if Loki would let him; close to his heart and connected together as one flesh. Loki comes on an almost silent little _ah-h-h_ , his breath hot against Thor’s neck.

They fall asleep together again afterwards even though their linens are hopelessly tangled and soiled and the entire house smells like spend and musk and sweat. Loki doesn’t even move from where’s he’s lying across Thor’s chest, just sighs and closes his eyes and goes limp and heavy.

When dawn finally comes, Thor wakes to find himself clean, the linens spotless, the windows open to let in fresh air, and the bed empty save for himself.

There is a single white and black feather on Loki’s pillow next to him.

Thor picks it up and runs his finger down the edge of it and wonders sadly how long it will be until he sees his brother again.

*

*

*

It’s a year before the construction of Asgardia is complete. A year of planning and building, of false starts and lack of sleep and exhilarating successes. A year of political maneuvering. A year of learning how to finally be the King that his people deserve, of helping them heal as he has healed.

A year of missing Loki.

Thor supposes it’s good that he’s had so much practice at missing his brother. It might be unbearable otherwise.

It _is_ bearable though. The three times before Loki had been dead, and now he is not, and that makes all the difference. Two times, Thor dreams of him. Not regular dreams—Seer dreams. In the first, they simply walk together along a path surrounding Asgardia’s new palace, and Thor takes Loki’s hand.

“Are you happy?” Thor asks. He’d asked Loki that once in these dreams when Loki was still a shade. Back then, his answer—that he wasn’t _unhappy_ —had been unsatisfying and disappointing.

“Not yet,” Loki says.

The “yet” fills Thor with quiet hope and he squeezes Loki’s hand tightly before he’s shoved back into his waking body.

In the second dream, Frigga is there too.

“Mother,” Loki says, choked, and she holds her arms out and he clings to her for a long moment. Then Thor joins in too and it’s almost like they’re boys again, each sitting on one of her knees with her arms around them and enveloped in her sweet perfume. She kisses them both and smooths their hair back from their faces. She whispers in Loki’s ear and he turns his face down and tries not to cry.

It doesn’t last long enough. It never does.

*

The day that Asgardia rises into the air, the first Asgardian baby is born since Ragnarok.

It’s the best omen that any of them could have hoped for.

*

Optimistically, Thor hasn’t had any chambers in the new palace constructed specifically for Loki. Instead, his own apartments are double the size that he needs, and the bed and bathtub are as well. He tries to imagine Loki commenting on the decor, on the furniture and the flow of the layout and the usefulness of the workroom that Thor has had attached, and Thor tries to adjust everything accordingly.

Loki will be back. He has to. His “yet” still lingers in Thor’s mind and heart. Thor wonders how long it will take Loki to find it.

*

It’s been six months in their new city-state when Thor comes to his chambers after a long day of council meetings and finds a certain skinny dark-haired man snoring in his bed and somehow managing to take up the entire thing.

Thor can’t stop smiling.

He jumps onto the bed, bouncing it with his not insignificant weight, until Loki grumbles and opens his eyes, and then Thor pounces and kisses him senseless.

“Are you back?” Thor asks, rubbing their noses together.

“Obviously,” Loki snorts, amused.

“For good?”

“‘For good’ is such an awfully long time.”

Thor kisses him again and Loki loops his arms around Thor’s neck and licks into his mouth and hums happily.

“I missed you,” Thor says. “Did you find what you were looking for?”

Loki’s eyes bore into his and he strokes a gentle hand down Thor’s cheek. He lets his thumb pull Thor’s lip down until it springs back, and then kisses it.

“Maybe,” Loki says. He’s smiling though, and his eyes are sparkling with his old mischief. His hair may be a bit longer and his face a bit sparer, but his expression looks so much like the Loki that Thor knew, in a way Thor hasn’t seen in a decade or more, that it fills Thor with a bubbling happiness. Wherever Loki has been, whatever he’s been doing, has clearly been good for him.

“Will you tell me about it later?” Thor asks. He’s nosing at Loki’s neck now, finding his scent, which, thank the Norns, hasn’t changed at all.

“Later,” Loki agrees, pulling Thor more firmly on top of him. He gasps a little when Thor sucks his earlobe into his mouth and bites. “ _Much_ later.”

It’s a long time before they’re done greeting each other properly. Their bodies reacquaint themselves with enthusiasm. Their hearts need no reacquaintance at all, for they’ve known and loved each other for longer than they’ve known themselves. The road to get them here stretches long and tortuous behind them. How far they’ve had to come to find their way back to this place that they already knew—that they have known ever since a childhood in which they were two laughing boys who adored each other more than anyone else in the world and had no reason to hide it.

Thor feels like a puzzle that had been missing a piece and is now finally complete. He knows that their struggles aren’t over, with each other and with life in general, and probably never will be, but he also knows that there is no one else he’d rather be facing the struggle with. Thor isn’t always the best at reading his brother, but he knows that Loki coming back means that he feels the same way.

They undo and come undone for each other late into the night, until their bodies have no more left to give.

“Move over, Cow,” Thor says sleepily afterwards, elbowing Loki in the side.

“Never,” Loki yawns. “Ass.” He digs his knee into Thor’s back for good measure.

Thor’s voice, quiet in the dark. “You’ll be here when I wake up?”

Loki’s voice, warm and surprisingly tender. “Yes.”

And after that, no words at all.

*

*

*

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Gusty, with a chance of thunderstorms](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14706863) by [writernotwaiting](https://archiveofourown.org/users/writernotwaiting/pseuds/writernotwaiting)




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